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3 Benefits of Going Green

You hear all about going green but you may wonder why you should do it. It may seem like a pain to set up a second trash can to collect plastic cups. It may not be easy to use a reusable plastic water bottle rather than the disposable ones. However, it is something you should do. You can actually benefit from it yourself.

How You Can Benefit

Depending on the type of environmentally friendly steps you take, you could see a significant improvement in your quality of life. It also feels good to do something that is good for the environment and for you. If you are still looking for ways to benefit from it, consider the following.

  • Going green can save you money. Reusing items saves money. You can save money on gas and fuel costs. You will cut the costs of almost everything you do.
  • Your health may improve. The more you get out to walk to the corner store or to ride your bike instead of drive that car, the better your health will be for it. Greener cleaners are safer on your respiratory system and your skin. Organic foods are a better source of nutrients.
  • You will save the earth with fewer chemicals getting into waterways and with fewer toxins depleting the ozone. You will not be using as many limited fossil fuels, either.

The question is, what are you doing to live a greener life? If you have yet to take on any of these changes, start with just one. Give yourself just enough push in the right direction. You will see just how beneficial it can be for you.

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4 eco-friendly businesses

Corporate social responsibility is becoming an important area of focus for all businesses. As worries about the environment and humanity’s impact on the globe escalate, more and more consumers are starting to care about whether the products and services they use have a large carbon footprint. Companies that pay attention to their environmental credentials and effectively manage their eco practices are going to be the ones that thrive in the future. Below are four companies that are doing their best to help the environment.

Gazelle

This company has made its mark by recycling electronic goods that traditionally are difficult for consumers to dispose of in a safe and environmental way. The firm assesses the monetary value of products by using retailers such as eBay to estimate the second-hand price it would fetch for a sale, and then pays the owner that amount. If the product is no longer working, the company will still recycle it for free. Such commitment to environmentally-friendly practices is clearly paying off, as it generated a revenue in 2009 of $8.3 billion.

Mercury Solar Systems

This company provides a range of solar energy solutions to both companies and consumers looking to both save money on their utility bills and help protect the planet. Renewable energy schemes are one of the areas being championed by the government as an effective way of sustainably powering the planet. The firm has experienced growth of 870 percent over three years – a sure sign that its reliance on renewable solar energy is paying off.

Echosign

Echosign is one of the world’s leading providers of digital business solutions, including its specialized range of electronic signature software. As well as being dedicated to streamlining business practices, Echosign is also a clear believer in environmental sustainability. The company is moving towards being fully reliant on wind farms and harnessing wind energy, while it also plants a tree for every customer that is referred to it by existing users. What’s more, the company’s products themselves encourage environmental thinking. Electronic signatures cut down on the need for paper and physical properties that are unsustainable; in fact, Echosign’s average customer helps the environment by saving 12,000 pieces of paper a year when using the firm’s services.

Eco-Products

Eco-Products started life as many companies do – being operated by a father and son, who sold office supplies that had been recycled to companies in its local area. However, the desire of businesses to improve their eco credentials led to the firm growing and growing, until it boasted a revenue of $47.5 million in 2009. The company has now expanded into other areas and one of the products it is most proud of is the PLA (or polylactic acid) cup. The cups are made from plant resources that are completely renewable and are revolutionizing the beverage industry as customers are flocking to stores that use the eco-friendly products.

Although traditionally companies often saw battle lines drawn between green practices and profit margins, the lines are becoming continuously blurred as more and more firms begin to make money based on their environmentally-conscious standpoints. How will you environmentally update your business?

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"Green" Businesses

Do you know what it means to be labeled as a “green business”? This refers to businesses that are finding ways to conserve energy, reduce harmful emissions, or be proactive in their recycling efforts. Being labeled as a “green business” is a good thing. Business that fall under this label show that they are making an effort to protect our environment, reduce waste, and are investing in our future. Many environmentally conscious individuals have made a commitment to only purchase items from or do business with companies that are labeled as “green.”

For quite some time “going green” was the thing to do. However, with some of the difficulties and issues we have seen with the economy there hasn’t been quite as much emphasis placed on this with big businesses lately. Many researchers, however, have continued to work towards more “earth friendly” items and are continuing to develop and market these items.

Bionic Power, Inc. is a company that has found a way to use your body’s energy to power batteries. They have created a device that straps to your leg and will charge portable batteries while you are walking.

Feelgoodz has begun manufacturing “eco-friendly” shoes that use a variety of natural materials and recycled paper to produce these shoes. The materials used to create these eco-friendly shoes include hemp, bamboo, natural rubber, and recycled paper.

One company that is doing a lot to protect our environment and our health is White Wave Foods. This company has been recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency for their efforts in the use of green power to power their manufacturing plants which produce primarily organic products.

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Grow Your Business through Green Marketing Strategies

The process of Green Marketing can help improve the environment as they involve processes where products or a service sold keeping in mind the benefit of the environment. If businesses want to attract new customers, they can include this practice of Green Marketing into their business plans by recycling paper for printing purposes, packaging, using soy-based ink and so on.

During the Gallop Poll, in the year of 2006, studies have shown that 77 percent of Americans believe that they need to play an important role themselves in order to improve the environment. People have taken this initiative by using environmental friendly products and services.

Incorporating green business practice into business can give a higher edge over others in terms of competition. While marketing, highlight on the points that involve green business practices such as steps taken to decrease pollution, recycling materials.

Try to highlight on points such as strategy used for conservation of resources and bringing in the latest technology to improve energy efficiency.

Businesses can further follow green business practices by using the latest technology. Travelling increases carbon footprint, so if a business uses technology and holds virtual meetings instead of travelling to the place, then this can save the cost of travelling and also reduce carbon footprint. However, if it is necessary to travel, then use of carbon-offsets can help reduce environmental pollutions.

Another strategy used for green marketing purposes is by reducing the waste of paper going in for paperless offices.

However, while using green initiative, be honest about the processes used when making the products and services.

A website can also be of great use for keeping customers informed about the latest products and services. Therefore, encouraging customers to become partner and providing them with helpful links can bring in a major difference to the business. If green marketing is incorporated, then it can never fail to build long lasting relationships with present customers as bring new customers.

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Tips to Get the Entire Office On Board with Going Green

Office contains boss, colleagues, customers subordinates and many other persons too, but the common interest of these personnel is to maintain a healthy environment in the office. The surroundings of the office make the mind of the person fresh or lazy. Greening plays an important role in the performance of the employee and employer. Here are some tips to maintain the lively culture of office.
Using the optimum energy in the office is very essential. Electricity is very important for the productivity of the employees but extra electricity may lead to the bore the environment of the office and greenery may help to use the electricity at the optimum level. Natural sunlight increases the health of the people and office both. Saving the electricity is the obligation of every person in the office or working environment.
Plastic bags are always helpful for shopping and carrying the things. Shopping bags, papers and many other plastic items in our daily use can be recycled and organizations put the recycling plant in the office for recycling these shopping bags, and papers and used plastic items.
Always use the product that has the recycling logo mentioned. It may include products that are more environments friendly. Environment friendly products increase the image of the products, when recycled. Every employee can save the energy and environment from global warming, for example, they may use the public transport instead of their own transport. This practice may minimize the global warming and healthy environment.
The responsibility of protecting the environment is to shift within the company. The project of environment is to rotate because then only everyone can know about the importance of the environment and Greening.
If every office starts saving the energy Greening, it will make the environment like paradise. Every person can play a vital role in protecting the environment.

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Keep Your Office Environment Green

The Xerox 914 was the first one-piece plain pa...
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Being a small business owner, you may be fascinated about the fact that you keep your business surroundings environment friendly. If you follow the below guidelines, apart from cutting down on energy costs, you can also keep your environment green.
Instead of having a single printer, opt for two printers. Use one printer for two sided papers, whereas use the other for taking routine printouts. Advise your employees to dump in the used papers in a separate box, rather than throwing those away into a waste bin. At times, additional or draft sheets that are printed can still good for re- usage. Print outs can be taken on the other side of such sheets.
Ensure that you place an empty box next to the Xerox machine so that your employees can dump in additional copies that are not required. These kinds of sheets can incise into halves or quarters, which later can use as note papers.
Enforce a mandatory rule that every employee should switch off devices such as computers, printers, Xerox machines and other office devices that are not used every moment or at the end of the day.
In storage or break rooms, use automatic light switches so that they turn off after office hours.
Do not allow employees to have their own electrical appliances such as toasters, ovens, coffee maker etc. Instead, these kind of devices should be switched off and stored away during nighttime, when not in use.
Offering a mug with a spoon as a present to your employees can reduce or completely get rid paper cups.
Make sure that you buy only environment friendly paper items for office usage
To retain the heat or coldness in your office, instruct your staff to open and close blinds as and when necessary.
Switch off lights used unnecessarily so that you can cut down on energy costs.

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Live a Green Lifestyle by Supporting Environmentally Friendly Businesses

If you are trying to improve the environment, then being a consumer of eco friendly products is the best way to live a greener lifestyle. Switch to the purchase of products offered by companies that practice green business. This way you can support the green business initiative.

A way to switch to eco friendly purchases may start from Fair Trade coffee and tea. When an eco friendly product, which worked under fair labor practice, given fair price, and used for growth and development of the environment, then the product certify as Fair Trade.

These eco friendly products such as coffee, tea, chocolates may be a little expensive than the regular products, but this additional expense made by the consumers is contributed to the improvement of the environment and those who worked towards achieving this eco friendly product.

Studies have shown that the textile industry uses 132 million tons of coal per year. This can affect the environment miserably. Traditionally water and chemicals used to grow cotton and the energy used to create synthetic fabrics can be very harmful to the environment. The huge amount of water used for finishing the process makes a lot of waste.

Making a transition to eco friendly textiles such as using organic cotton blankets, bamboo shirts, hemp jeans, can improve the environment and reduce the wastage of the society.

You can also shift your office environment to an eco friendly environment. Instead of using the age-old ink and paper, you can shift to non-toxic inks, recycled pens and paper. These types of eco friendly products are available at online shops like Dolphin Blue, O’Bon, and The Ultimate Green Store. So go green in your workplace by making a transition towards using eco friendly products.

Therefore, the products you use in everyday life can bring about a major change to the environment. By using eco friendly products, you are supporting the green business initiatives and passively helping to improve the environment.

Filed Under: Energy Saving Appliances, Environment, Green Businesses Tagged With: , ,

Don’t Live a Part-time Green Lifestyle – Be Environmentally Friendly at Your Business

Two cartridges (one with black ink, one with c...
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You cannot help to improve the environment by following green business initiatives only in your personal life. If you want a greener environment, you have to adopt the policies in work place too. It may sound tough to achieve a greener environment, but it is quite easy. To begin with, offices can use eco friendly furniture, products, and accessories and so on.

When buying chairs, you may go in for Steelcase’s Think Chair. This is a recyclable product and is made of 41%-recycled materials.

When considering desks, here also go in for eco friendly products. Desks made from recyclable products like rubber, plastic or recycled newsprint, cardboard fiber or core used to achieve the greener environment. Companies like EcoWork and Dirtt offer these type of eco friendly products for office purposes. They offer a wide range of range of products to choose from and their products are very customizable to suit the office requirements.
Even in the case of electronic items, offices can go green. The motherboards and circuit boards used by the offices reuse into clipboards, binders, mouse pads and other office supplies. Hence, it says that a Green Office is the supplier of Green products. People have a preconceived notion that eco friendly are very expensive than the regular products. However, this is false. It may cost a little more than regular products, but the contribution you are doing to the environment by adopting green policies is priceless.
Finally, for some companies such as law firms and doctors, it is necessary to use papers. They cannot go electronic. In that case, these companies can then hire a recycling company who can come and recycle the papers they use. Also, when ink cartridges get empty, go in for a refill of the ink cartridge instead of buying a brand new cartridge. These can bring about a major positive change to the environment.

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Make Your Office Eco-friendly by Creatively Reusing Common Materials

A lot of paper and materials are wasted particularly when mailing gifts, packaging items and so forth. Items created from polythene such as packing tape, bubble wrap, and Styrofoam package fillers, and packing peanuts are the worst to the environment. Going green rather than using polythene and Styrofoam can decrease waste and pollution.
Even through polythene is sometimes recycled to make bubble wrap. Again, bubble wrap, if made from cardboard or crimped paper makes an eco friendly product.
Cornstarch used for making biodegradable versions of packing peanuts. Truck rental businesses, office supply shops, moving and expert packaging supplier’s supplies eco bubble wraps and peanuts.
Natural Rubber, made from rubber tree is a biodegradable product. This environmentally friendly packing tape used to seal boxes and cartons supplied from office stores.

Before going in to buy eco friendly products, seek the materials that are available and find creative ways to reuse them. Below are some ways of how you can use waste items.

If waste papers are packed densely into boxes, they can serve as good fillers.
Make a padded box using plastic shopping bags prior to recycling them.
Use towels for wrapping up materials that break away easily.
Try to use bedding to cushion electronics or Knick Knacks instead of packing pillows and blankets separately.
If you put smaller breakables inside padded items, then that will keep them more protected.
Use old newspapers instead of buying newsprint that is plain white.
It is better to utilize old sheets or use a multiuse tarp, than buying a toss away mattress bags made from plastic.

Hence, if you use household items creatively for packaging, then it can reduce waste. But if it is necessary to buy packaging materials, go in for eco friendly products that will help reduce waste and filling up of bins and landfills.

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