Staff Employee

You are the oar of the great ship for without you the ship would not progress forward. It may feel as if your contribution to a sustainable company would be as significant as just one lighter held up at a Springsteen concert. Your actions and inactions are just as vital as the major sustainable steps your company may or may not have implemented. Let us explain:

Your firm is, for all intents and purposes, a small city for about ten hours every day. It requires energy, it may contain food and drinks, and contains resources that we use to do our work or to help us "live" for those ten hours. Because your firm is far smaller than an actual city, you make up a greater percentage of the whole of the firm and make a greater company impact than you realize!

What we will give you here are some tools and ideas in which you can decrease your intercompany environmental footprint - and indirectly the company's environmental footprint to the real world. In short, by you consuming less, the company consumes less. When the company consumes less, it offers them additional resources to invest in either their employees or maintaining a positive company growth (or both).

Here are some ideas to get you started! Click on the tep to reveal the explanation!

	Power down - It's the little things that count!
	You are probably well aware that a company filled with electronic equipment (from computers to copy and coffee machines) use a major portion of their resources on utilities to run them. For Desktop PC's, EnergyStar estimates that $25-$75 can be saved annually through proper power management. For monitors alone, putting it in sleep mode saves tremendous energy. But did you know it still sips 0.01amps? That translates to 1.2W which translates to 10.5 KWhrs per year! By comparison, an average household uses 16.5 kWhrs per day (remember, they're running a refrigerator and lights and everything else). 10.5 KWhrs multiplied over the entire firm becomes significant. So you make sure you computer goes into "sleep mode" when not in use (ask your IT/IS to set this up unless you know how) and be sure to turn off your monitor (usually a small lit button on front) when you're away. This easy habit will ensure that your area is electricity sip-free!

	Paper is great - email is better!
	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: If you use 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 you email it to can print if they really need to. An easy to access and up to date intranet will keep people from printing often-used information-resources (phone lists, reference-guides, etc) Speak up and let them know of anything that would be useful on there for repeated use or by more than one person. Fax-to-File: By setting up the fax machine or server to receive faxes and automatically generate pdf's, it can be accessed easier and be emailed to you directly. This will also keep an accurate accounting of received faxes versus looking through paper-reports if needed. The toner will never run out so you will never need to have the fax re-sent! If at all possible, try and do everything with email and attachments. Either scan to file the document to fax or...(read the next one) Printers can now be set up with email addresses so printing to email is easier than ever!. Ask your IT/IS if this is available or could be in the future. It's a real time and money saver!

	How did we get here in the first place?
	Carpooling! This would be a tremendous benefit for you, the firm, and the environment in so many ways! It saves on gas, any parking fees, can life, you have a driving buddy (or buddies), and a whole lot more! Of course, the biggest drawback is schedules. We are often faced with different schedules than our peers so coordinating a mutual arrival/departure can be daunting. Here are some ways to explore the potential and its benefits: If you work in a "9-5" environment, the hardest part (scheduling) is a non-concern. But if it is, here are a few things that you could consider: Is there anything that you could do while you're waiting for the other person (online bills, shopping list, working ahead, organization, or anything you may keep putting off because you don't have time) Depending on the size of the firm, how do you know who lives where? Send out an email to the firm to see who would be interested in starting a carpool list (you may be surprised to see the amount of people who write back!) Once you have a pool of people, start mapping out who lives where (visually) and you can see very quickly who can ride with whom. Some people will be lucky and fill up their car entirely! You'd divide all costs amongst the riders so for a 4-person "team", that's a 75% off of all your work-transportation! A good mapping program you could use is Google Earth as it can visually map a multitude of people-locations. You'll also get addicted to that program for all your virtual travels you'll be doing! So, there you have it. There is some prep. work to get this started but the benefits are immediate! You could also divide up the tasks based on your email responses. All it starts with is an email to everyone with a subject line "Is anyone else interested in carpooling?"

	You're worth it, eat in style!
	You eat on a nice dish at home, use silverware, and drink out of a glass cup. Why are you lowering your standards with paper plates, a plastic "spork", and a myriad of ugly water-cooler "cuplets" to get something to eat and drink? Why not eat in style everyday so you make your work-day that much less like an institution and more like an extension of a comfortable lifestyle. Bring in your plate, a set of silverware, and your favorite coffee mug and drinking glass. It doesn't take up that much room and you will serve yourself not only better food (because it now looks good on a plate), but you'll be serving yourself a healthy dose of self-dignity. If your office doesn't have a kitchenette, there's no reason why you can't rinse it off in the bathroom. Bringing it in a handy container will ensure that it's safe and easy to carry. Go ahead, try it! You'll be amazed how good it feels to eat in style everyday!

	Your personal box of "goodies!"
	By "goodies" we mean things that aren't trash. By "things that aren't trash" we mean anything that can be recycled. We throw away very little trash at work - but it doesn't appear to be the case by the amount the janitors haul away everyday. Why? Because our trash cans under our desks is a catch-all to anything we don't need anymore. But just because we don't need it, it doesn't mean that it's really trash that is worthless. There are probably lots of papers in there, maybe an empty can or two, old sticky notes, and a few napkins. If you had a place to put the recycling things, the only thing that would be in that trash-can would be the few napkins. So, why not? Why not have a dedicated box where you place all your recyclables? If your company already recycles - just take your box to the station and sort it there. If they don't, you can easily take things home to your recycling bin every other night to weekly (depending on how much you generate). The beauty and psychology in all this is this: When you actually see how little trash you generate, you almost ask whether you even need a trash can. Also, when you start to see your recyclable paper stack up, you will physically see what your printing habits are - and ultimately help you curb that printing habit. Try it, you'll be amazed!

	Telecommute - what's this?
	In short, this is a term for working from home. This would be ideal in many occasions - especially if your commute is long or are faced with bad weather. This also offers you an opportunity to be more flexible around your personal life if you need to watch your kids or run frequent errands. For more information on this topic and your and how your firm can benefit from this scenario, check out MITE.org for frequently asked questions. If it can work for you (even on a temporary basis) - perfect!

	Etch-a-sketch - not just for kids anymore...
	Let's face it, we scribble notes and phone messages on anything we could find when we're at home. From back of envelopes to old receipts. At work, you have crisp post-it notes or a pad of freshly printed lined paper in front of you, tantalizing you with its clean and empty lines. A doodle here and a phone number there - each little scribble taking up an entire sheet. We look under our desk in the recycling "goodie" box and find that we crumple up a lot of paper! Here's an idea for you to minimize that: Why not use the back of your printouts as a scratch pad. Simply stack say 50 of them together and clip them on top for an insta-note pad! If you can, cut up the sheets into 4 to make smaller and thicker pad-creations! You've now created your own little sustainable office-writing system! It's easy, resourceful, and people will be copying you! Good for you - you're setting an example of interpersonal sustainability!

	Start a sustainable committee
	Unless you work in an office which is on the forefront of everything sustainable, chances are it could use some help. In a larger firm, groups can manage an area of oversight far easier than any one individual. Perhaps this is where you come in. Create a sustainability-committee. The group would create action-plans for recycling, instill and monitor energy efficiency, community outreach programs, and anything in between. These actions will not only lighten the firms ecological footprint, but give an edge over other firms in that you will be more in-tune of what you have, use, and can offer to the community. And when you offer to the community, it does tend to give back - now that's smart PR! A committee is a powerful entity that encompasses a majority in an expertise. Your committee will be taken more seriously and you can accomplish a lot more a lot faster! Talk to your Human Resource department (if you have one) or other inter-corporate executive if needed to see if you could start one up. More than likely it will not even be an issue as any firm could easily see its benefits.

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