Make the Most of Every Piece of Paper

Friday is green:work day here at green:easy, where we give you simple, inexpensive tips to make your work life a little more eco-friendly,  whether you work from a home office or a corporate cubicle.

Despite all of the predictions that we’d soon be a paperless society, we are all still buried under mountains of faxes, memos, handouts, brocures, and paper-based handbooks. The good news is that,  even before we recycle that  memo, we can put the paper to further use. After all, “reuse” comes before “recycle” for a reason!

Tips for Getting Plenty of Use From One Sheet of Paper:

1. Keep a clipboard on hand. Any one-sided documents that you’re done using can be put, blank side up, on the clipboard to jot notes and messages down throughout the day.

2. Cut one-sided documents into quarters, and use the small pieces of paper in place of message pads, scratch  paper, or sticky notes.

3. Keep paper that is blank on  one side to print out drafts of documents.

4. When possible, print or copy on both sides of the paper.

5. Use strips of used paper as bookmarks, placeholders in documents, or to separate piles of  copies for sorting later.

6. Bring used paper  home for  your kids to draw on  the blank side.

7. Bring used paper home for your kids to make winter decorations, such  as paper chains and snow flakes.

8. Shred used paper and use it as packing material.

9. Shred used paper and put  it into your  compost bin, where it will provide carbon to the pile.

10. Don’t throw out old handbooks or manuals when your company updates them. Since they’re already bound, they make perfect notebooks!

Power Down When the Workday’s Done

Friday is green:work day, when we give you tips for greening up your work life, whether you work from a cubicle or your own home office.

Millions of office workers leave their computers on, even after they’ve gone home for the day. According to Kiplinger’s, a mid-size company spends about $165,000 per year in electricity costs for computers and peripherals that have been left on overnight. Besides the obvious economic cost, the environmental cost is equally grim: across the nation, approximately 15 million tons of CO2 are released into the atmosphere. Not good, to put it mildly.

So why don’t the computers get turned off? Excuses ranged from “so software updates can be installed overnight” to “it takes too long to start up in the morning.” Really, people. Are we in that much of a hurry to start working that we can’t wait a few minutes for a computer to boot up? Have a cup of coffee or something.

Maybe the most depressing stat from the polling done by Kiplinger’s is this: 53% of those polled didn’t care what their company’s carbon footprint was. This level of apathy is the biggest hurdle in making positive change for the environment.

So, what’s today’s tip? Turn off the computer when you’re done working, man! And while you’re at it, shut off the printer, copier, and monitor, too!

Save Trees: How to Use Less Paper in Your Office

Friday is green:work day, where we give you tips and ideas for how to green your workspace, whether you work in your own home office or a corporate cubicle.

The concept of a “paperless office” is one that hasn’t taken root quite yet. While many managers can send memos via e-mail, how many of us still find a paper version in our in-basket? Procedure manuals are still printed up and put into three-ring binders, and an endless barrage of office supply catalogs hit our desks weekly. While many of these things my be out of your control, there are simple things that each of us can do to save a few trees during the work day. Here are some ideas:

Ask yourself: Do I really need to print this?

So much of the printing we do is kind of an automatic hoarding reflex. We find some information online and say, “oh, I might need that info someday” and we print it and it clutters up our files until we need it….or we forget we have it and end up printing the same thing all over again. Make use of your web browser’s bookmark feature. If you have a lot of bookmarks, take the time to organize them so you can find what you’re looking for.

If you’re not into the whole bookmarking thing, consider using an application like Google Notebook, where you can copy and paste the information you want to keep into your own online file, and the full text of the information is there when you need it.

Use Paper Efficiently

What does this mean? It means, fit as much information on one printed sheet of paper as possible. Consider reducing the size of your margins from the default 1.25″ to 1″, and you will use 8% less paper per year. Print on both sides of the page. Consider keeping a stash of paper you’ve already printed on one side to use for drafts and the like. Or, you can put your used paper on a clipboard and use the backs of the printed paper for writing notes to yourself. Cut the sheets up and use those to take messages instead of those little pink phone message pads.

Reduce the Amount of Paper That Comes Your Way

If you are the person responsible for ordering office supplies, undoubtedly tons of catalogs come your way. Call the company, ask them not to send a catalog anymore. Most companies have online catalogs. Just bookmark them and order away when you need to.

Of course all of this paper-saving is great, but we also need to be sure we’re recycling any office paper we’re finished with, and, again if you’re the supply purchaser, purchasing recycled paper closes the recycling loop.

It can become a bit of a game, seeing how much paper we can save during a workday. And, some days, we need all the distractions we can get.