We are in the middle of Earth week – as Wiki Answers states Earth Week is a: celebration of the Earth and the environment, in order to get environmental sustainability into the hearts and minds of the community. You can be a part of this by practicing Earth Friendly habits in your work!
5 Earth Friendly Saving Tips (‘tongue in cheek”):
- Save the trees. Reduce your paper consumption. Consider how you store information – are you taking advantage of the electronic storage or do you print out and keep everything in paper? How can you reduce the paper you use by 10-15% this year? Reuse your envelopes – just slap a new label over the old one and tape it shut. Or Stop mailing all together – doesn’t everyone just NEED more emails?
- Save the oceans/lakes. Very sad this week to hear another grey whale beached itself in Washington State and the amount of debris they found in it’s stomach. After a hard day at work, some of you may turn to liquor or vicadin. Do not flush your leftovers! It gets in the water supply and harms the creatures living there. Instead use what you have or share 🙂
- Save the air. Actually visiting customers in person needs to be cut! Stop driving and flying all over to build relationships – use email for everything to reduce carbon emissions.
- Save the landscape. Do you know how quickly landfills are growing? Just miles from where I live, the ‘moutain’ of trash is visibly taller each year. Instead of throwing out old products and marketing materials – combine them into special sales or a special marketing push – better to get them into the hands of someone than YOU be the one that throws them away. Oh, that don’t work or have obsolete information? Just use a Sharpie to ‘fix’ that.
- Save the resources. Two tips on this one!
- Most plastic is petroleum based. With gas prices creeping again and concern over ‘running out’ of natural resources – eliminate plastic ‘trinkets’ or give-aways. Most customers or prospects won’t really use the ruler, mug, bouncy ball, water bottle, or business card holder with your name/logo on it. Think of ‘green’ gifts that they will use! Recycled personal paper products, granola bars, or a reusable shopping bag – now THOSE are gifts that are memorable!
- You can save a lot of electricity by powering down whenever possible. Yes, turn off the Blackberry, Droid, Queues and your handhelds! Use them for 8-10 hours a day and then turn them off. Your family and friends might really appreciate having your full attention and you will need to charge them less saving electricity!
There you have it – five crazy ways to help the planet. Though following them will COST you a lot of success. And while I had fun coming up with them – I am hopeful this gets you thinking about wasted resources.  I really am an environmentally conscious person. We recycle, put our scraps in a mulch pile, reuse paper in the office for printing drafts, carpool whenever possible and so much more.
In business, we do have opportunities to be Earth Friendly – Make sure your business trips are planned well, recycle and turn off your electronics after hours.
What other fun tips do you have to Save the Earth at work?
