You're holding the purse - the company's purchasing ability! With your influence, the direction a company invests its resources directly benefits not only the office sustainability effort, but a major source of the company's overall environmental footprint. Indirectly, you are creating a healthier working environment and are increasing company morale! Because of your tremendous positive influence ability, you also have one of the greatest needs in becoming fully aware in all the purchases and being a direct link to each request. This doesn't mean you have to do other people's job, it just means that you can delegate and hold the power of the word to make sure each request becomes a sound sustainable choice.

We will give you an overview of key areas to look for. It's also a good idea to flip through the rest of the areas of work to see what you can recommend and look for in detail.

• Education - not just for kids anymore
  Your decisions are based on your knowledge and ability. But as discussed under "creating a theme" below, the best decisions are based on your intimate knowledge of as many options there are for the business you're dealing with. Even if you are not completely familiar, the mere fact that you know options exist allows you to coordinate a small fact-finding session when needed.
  
  New information and options are available everyday - the ability and willingness to search for it is essential. We hope this site will offer many of the alternates you need. In our well-established careers, having gone through much schooling and training, are set up to do the everyday tasks we come to work for. Is that it? No, it's not. We constantly learn because we'll always be human. Our willingness to learn is what gets more difficult with age, not ability.
  
  
• Wielding your powerful sword! - your impact on creative influence
  Depending on your level of "hand in finances" (role), creative influence extends to many useful areas. Say you are in data entry - reimbursement-check coordination - general money help. How can you impact the system? Computerized power!

One ream of paper (500 sheets) uses 6% of a tree! Printing also uses toner or ink and decreases printer life. Paper is mailed or handed off to people using man-power and other time / personnel / transportation resources. Email was created for this stuff! Let's try and put paper out of business like cell-phones did to pay-phones! There are immeasurable ways to accomplish this; we'll try to cover a few to get you started:

• You've heard of mail-merge, set-up e-mail-merge to email the document to everyone!
• Set the default printer to pdf - it's much easier to organize and people can print if they really need to. Making people manually switch printers will force them to think before they press the 'print' button.
• An easy to access and up to date intranet will keep people from printing often-used information-resources (phone lists, reference-guides, etc)
• Printers can now be set up with email addresses so printing to email is easier than ever and should be encouraged. Ask your Information Technology experts on setting this up.

Many employees don't need the check-stubs or would be better served with digital versions for record keeping. Find out from your financial or payroll service to see if that can be set up. This will save time (immediate action) and money (less paper supplies and stamps) and employees do appreciate a higher level of service!

401k and other benefits information can also be distributed this way. The employees who need to can print it out, but you're giving them the option, not the likeliness of waste by ones who throw it away.

• You're creating a theme - others will follow!
  Your position may be of finance-approval. Your ability to offer a theme and cut costs will be highly regarded. This,as you know, is also a creative task because finding alternatives to existing systems that delivers the same thing (or better) and probably at a lower cost takes knowledge and a dose of creativity. The important thing to remember is to try and keep the usefulness and use (two different things) of the approval in mind. From simple office and client items to trips and major reservations. Because you cannot possibly do all the research for all the approvals yourself, it's up to the individual requesting it to maintain the established theme.

Let's talk about this "theme." An approach to all your business dealings will be handled with a sub-surface level of overall care. This care is a conscientious attempt to choose companies and systems that also follow sustainable principles, lower consumption on every level possible, and reduce waste. Generally this will also have a wonderful component of saving tremendous amounts of money but that's just a great by-product of reducing consumption. It's measurable, but that's not the theme. Also, and to be blunt, you can sell that your company is environmentally aware, you cannot sell that your company is cheap.

Others will follow - your care in the themed direction will inevitably raise awareness and heightened consciousness of the rest of the employees (as well as clients). It's far more powerful to be part of a global need than just a company's need. Their level of acceptance is dependent upon the questions they ask of themselves and their own actions. If you're just "saving money," that's just smart business. If you're choosing based on a "common good," they will inquire about what "that good" is. When they find out that it involves them as well, that's a theme to follow!

• Supplies, supplies, and more supplies!
  Mailing, stamping, highlighting, collating, organizing, filing, tabbing, and on and on. What a visual "hands-on" world we live in. Aside from distribution (mailing), the biggest reason we do most of that hands-on is for ease of finding if / when we need the information again. Remember the card-catalogues at the library? Flipping through endless 3x5 cards alphabetically-arganized in seemingly endless cabinets? Once you find the card then go through the number to find that one book on the number-organized shelving system? Now we have computers and you type in search words and magically gives you instant direction. Google made billions from the "search" service! We need a simple way to search and pay money for it! Can this computer organization be used in your office? The digital world offers a tremendous ability to make our jobs easier and faster - why not try and use it!

We can't get away from visual requirements (cross checking numbers side by side), but we can make that sustainable by thinking in terms of "the temporary." Much of the "proof-reading" is strictly that, a temporary means of making sure the information is right. This involves your time but also resources. Can scratch-paper be used? Can it be printed double sided? Folders re-used? Re-use binders from other vendors and use a sticker to cover up / title it? Remember, it's only used for information-finding - that's all!

Again, contact us if you feel we left out something crucial and/or need to update something.

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