Ways to Improve the Environmental Friendliness of Your Business

Face it; it is easy to waste items at work and to not think about reducing, reusing, recycling, repurposing or regenerating resources. However, maintaining an environmentally friendly business helps your bottom line as well as the environment. So what can you do to improve the green at your place of business?

First, see that policies are put in place which encourages reducing, reusing and recycling.

Maximize energy efficiency. Turn down the heat or up the air conditioning by a couple of degrees. Be sure all windows and doors are insulated. Use energy efficient light bulbs. Turn equipment and machinery off when appropriate.

Reduce your water usage. Install displacement toilet dams in toilet reservoirs. Stop leaky faucets as soon as they are spotted.

Recycle, recycle. Have specially marked bins for recycling to collect paper, cardboard, aluminum cans, plastics and ink cartridges.

Keep the “e” in e-mail. Don’t print off an e-mail unless it is absolutely necessary.

Check with your suppliers and see if they take back packaging and reuse it.

Look for a supply of paper with maximum recycled content.

Ask all of your suppliers to let you know what “green” policies and practices they have in place. If they don’t have any, look for another supplier.

Reduce paper usage by producing double sided documents. Reuse padded envelops.

Buy more environmentally friendly vehicles.

Putting just a few of these in practice will help you to “Be Green and Save”!

Pot Your Plants with Plastics and Save

We were potting our flowers and herbs this year and decided we were using way too much potting soil in our large to medium sized planters. We decided to fill the pots half way with plastics that would otherwise be thrown out or sent on for recycling. We fill the pots with crushed milk jugs, plastic orange juice bottles, margarine containers and even the original pots the plants came in. This saved us about half the amount of potting soil we normally would use, which of course meant we saved half the money we would normally spend on potting soil. We also were repurposing items which would have otherwise wound up in a landfill and we can save those items to use again next year. Not only that, the pots drain well and the plants are growing great. You know they are never going to use all that soil way down at the bottom of the planter! It's a win-win situation.

Now that is a way to Be Green and Save!

If you have any tips on how to Be Green and Save, please feel free to share them.