Going Green at the Office

Going green in your office can serve your business in many ways. For one, you’re showing both employees and clientele that you believe in the importance of sustainability. Secondly, you are likely to save money because reusable materials are more cost effective than disposable items. Take a close look at each area of your office to find ways to make a positive environmental impact.

Less Paper = Less Waste

A great way to green your office is to go mostly paperless. Encourage employees to use email and other electronic forms of communication whenever appropriate. Recycle all paper in the office to reduce waste. Get rid of file cabinets and paper filing systems if you still store physical copies of business documents. Instead, create digital records in an online filing cabinet to keep important information that you need on hand. For printers, check out soy based ink, which emits fewer toxins into the environment and is naturally derived from soybeans.

Reusable Over Disposable

Offering healthier and fewer bottled beverages is another way to go green. For instance, a Kitchenaid refrigerator water filter can be installed in the office fridge to provide workers with purified water while reducing waste from plastic bottles. With a water filtration system, employees will rely less on bottled water and can bring in reusable cups in lieu of plastic disposable cups. Plates and utensils for food items should also be reusable as opposed to plastic.

Changing Up Business Travel

Lower the impact of emissions by making changes in how employees travel to and from work. Offer incentives for employees to carpool to work. You can give them preferred parking at the office building. This may mean spots at the front of the building closest to the entrance or in a shaded spot within the lot. Cut down on business travel requirements for employees by using teleconferencing software on your computer. Another possibility to reduce the amount of travel required is to change the hours worked by employees. For instance, you could offer a four day, 10 hour workweek instead of a five day, eight hour workweek. Also, if some of the job duties can be performed at home, allow employees to work from home for part of the week. According to Earth911, gas emissions can be reduced by 0.2 to 0.8 tonnes per year by simply driving ten percent less.

Reducing Electronics Energy Usage

Since computers are typically a major component of any office, you should make them as green as possible. Choose energy saving settings when setting up each workstation. If there’s a sleep mode, set it on all computers, faxes and printers in order to reduce energy impact when the machine is not in use. At the end of the day, request that each employees shuts down their computers and unplug any electronic devices not used often.

Switch Up Office Lighting

The lighting installed in the office can also be adjusted to make your business a more environmentally friendly company. CFLs and LEDs can be used for lighting fixtures and signage throughout the building. These types of bulb last longer and use less electricity than standard bulbs.

Once you finalize your plans to go green, get your employees involved. Hold a meeting to discuss all of the changes you are going to implement to help the environment. Ask for feedback and any additional suggestions they may have on how to green your office.

Detoxify your office

The work place is one of the preeminent spots to pick up a virus. You can stay green and stay clean in the office just like you do at home when you make a few concessions and use some common sense. By combining natural processes with technology, you can detoxify any office.

Get It Clean

Cleaning is a logical place to start, but since the goal is to detoxify, leave the chemically based products at the store and look for a natural solution. Vinegar is an effective all-purpose cleaner that will help rid any surface of dirt and bacteria. The acidic formula works as both a deodorizer and disinfectant. Mix up a batch of natural cleaning product by combining equal parts vinegar and water. Fill up reusable spray bottles and place one on every desk. Employees can give everything in their workspace a good initial cleaning and then keep the bottle handy for everyday use. For stubborn coffee rings, sprinkle baking soda on half a lemon and use it as a scrubber. The lemon will give the office a clean, fresh smell and bleach the stain at the same time.

Natural Air Filtration

There is a reason that employees would rather be outdoors. Plants are nature’s air filtration system. They absorb carbon dioxide and replace it with fresh, clean oxygen. Line your space with plants and give them to everyone in the office as a ‘Go Green’ tool to remove toxins from the air. For desks, consider live rubber plants, which are easy to care for and do not require much light to thrive. Try hanging English Ivy as a fix for common allergies. You can place bamboo palms on the floors to remove impurities in the air, as well.

Mechanical Filtration

A HEPA air filtration system will work as an effective back up for the plants. HEPA filters remove 99.9 percent of all harmful particles from the air including bacteria, viruses, allergens and dust. The filters use a tight weave that traps even small particles like pet danger and dust mites. Air purifying systems are easy to handle, inexpensive, require little maintenance and quiet enough for an office atmosphere.

Hook up a water filtration system at the office to give everyone clean water to drink that is free of pollutants and chemicals. Consider a system that uses 4396841 filters. Replace the filters regularly for continual clean water. Water filtration is an environmentally friendly way for everyone to drink healthier water.

Yoga

Technically, yoga will not help clean or purify the office, but it is still an effective detoxifier. A healthy body is better able to fight illness. Yoga is an exercise that strengthens muscles, improves balance and flexibility plus it helps to relieve stress. Set up in-office classes for lunch periods or get everyone to stay after hours. You can use video tutorials or have a class with an instructor in the office. Replace afternoon cigarette breaks with a stretching break. This will relieve built up tension to improve attitudes and performance.

The Break Room

Cleaning the office is a fine time to throw away the chips and cookies that are always sitting around the break room. Replace the soda machine with organic juices and fill the cabinets and refrigerator with healthy foods. If you get your employees started on organic food, free of toxins and preservatives, they may take that practice home with them creating greater overall health in your office. As a perk, offer classes in healthy cooking. Some insurance companies have programs that teach people in the workplace how to eat right as well.

Detoxifying the office is a project that should include everyone. From general cleaning to eating organically, reinforcing a toxic-free life will benefit you and your work family. Living a healthy lifestyle is easier when you do it together.

Current Research

Many researchers look for ways to convert existing and renewable resources in to fuel for vehicles. One recent project at the University of California focused on creating liquid electricity using special microbes. This type of fuel converts solar electricity in to the liquid, so it’s an efficient and renewable resource. The commercial viability of this particular research project is in question, but the overall concept is an exciting one for the future of biofuels. The amount of gas and oil needs to be reduced one way or another, and researching alternative fuel sources is one way to take care of this problem.

It takes quite a bit of time for a research project of this magnitude and importance to make it through the entire process. If you aren’t sure what you should do in the meantime, you have options for your fleet. Use fleet tracking software to figure out your overall fuel consumption. If you can, replace the vehicles with the most fuel consumption with hybrid or electric vehicles. Look into alternative routes that don’t create as much travel time to cut back as well. If every vehicle has a GPS, the device can calculate the shortest route to a particular destination to save you miles and cut back on your carbon footprint.

Fleet management systems are another way to cut back on your overall fuel consumption. When you use this type of system, it’s easier to keep everything coordinated between your shipments and fleet. You cut down on the amount of time, effort and labor wasted because you aren’t sure where a shipment is, or where it should be. In addition to helping your business become more environmentally friendly, you save money when you set up your fleet in this manner.

Another form of cutting down your current carbon footprint is keeping your orders and shopping as local as possible. If you have a local source of goods that is slightly more expensive than the goods you ship in, do the math on whether or not you save money by cutting out the shipping overhead. You might be surprised at how much you end up saving.

Alternative fuel possibilities are a development that every business needs to keep its eyes on. A change in fueling could save you a great deal of money, as well as limiting your environmental impact. Keep your eyes peeled on the research coming out of universities and other facilities to try and plan for the next alternative fuel that might just becoming a viable commercial prospect. If you’re already expecting the change, you won’t be left in the dark.

This means that once it gets dark, it will be on. This is true as long as it is working and has had the opportunity to collect sunlight. Because of this, you may want to cautious where you install them. For example, if you prefer it to be really dark in your bedroom, avoid placing one right outside your bedroom window. Besides this, there are really no negative things that can be said about these types of lights. A solar lamp post is a great addition to any yard. A prime benefit of a solar lamp post is that it is cost-effective. These lights do not cost money to use. Once you purchase them, you may need to replace the LED lights or batteries, but that is it. They do not use electricity, so they will not affect your bill. Because they do not require electricity, they do not need to be wired in.

This makes these lights very simple to install. In fact, anyone could install one. You do not need to wire it and it can be placed anywhere. On the solar lamp post, you will see a solar panel. This panel is a very important component of the light. It will collect sunlight, which will be used to produce light during the nighttime hours. A solar lamp post usually comes with between 6 and 12 bright LEDs. These are the lights that will be used during the night. They will use the stored energy from the sun and this will cause them to light up. Some of these light posts may require batteries. If you purchase one that needs batteries, you should make sure that you replace them as needed. Most of these also contain lights that are very bright. They often use bright white LEDs because a bright white light can be very bright. These lights will produce enough light to illuminate areas in your yard. People use these lights all over their yard. They are so easy to use and you can move them around.

If you normally keep them in your front yard, you can easily move them into your backyard if you are having a party. They are great to put near your driveway. They will help guests see where they are going, and you won’t even have to remember to turn the yard lights on. They will automatically come on when it gets dark enough. This is another benefit of solar lamp posts; as the seasons change, it will get dark at different times every day. With a solar lamp post, you don’t have to worry about resetting a timer; you also don’t have to worry that your lights are on before the sun goes down. A solar lamp post is ideal for your front yard or backyard, and they are perfect for gardens or ponds.

Sustainable Agriculture is one of the keys to our future on this planet

Congratulations on your upcoming graduation; do you know what you’re doing next? Some of the common reasons to get a biology degree are to build an attractive application for medical school, to get into graduate school or to work as a lab manager. If these don’t really appeal to you, another option to consider is dedicating your career to helping create a better world through sustainable agriculture.

What is Sustainable Agriculture?

Sustainable agriculture is food production through practices that can be continued indefinitely. In unsustainable agriculture, natural resources, such as water and soil, are used faster than they can be replaced. The results may include famine, pollution and the need to destroy wildlife habitats in order to expand farmland.

Benefits of Sustainable Agriculture

Sustainable agriculture can address these problems in the U.S. and worldwide.

• Food security: More than a billion people worldwide don’t get enough to eat each day. Sustainable agriculture uses fewer resources and has a lower risk of famine resulting from droughts.
• Less environmental impact: Sustainable agriculture does not include the use of harmful pesticides that can pollute the water and soil. It does include reducing soil erosion. Also, fewer nutrients are depleted from the soil, so there is less need to expand farmland. This means that farmers don’t need to continually cut down rainforests and invade other natural habitats because of over-farmed land.
• Urban improvements: In inner cities, sustainable agriculture means community and balcony garden projects. These endeavors increase access to fresh, affordable foods, and can make communities more tight-knit.
• Health: Sustainable agriculture usually means shifting to a greater emphasis on a plant-based diet. You can lower your risk for heart disease when you eat less fatty red meat and more healthful proteins such as beans.
• Cost: Unsustainable agricultural practices will inevitably lead to the depletion of resources like nutrient-rich soil and water. Developing extensive schemes—including irrigation systems—to mitigate these losses is expensive.

Are You a Good Candidate for Encouraging Sustainable Agriculture?

You may be interested in it if:

• You are interested in ecology and how changing one part of the system can affect other parts of the ecosystem
• You are interested in promoting a cleaner environment while reducing worldwide hunger
• You enjoy problem-solving and working with diverse people toward common goals

Education for a Career Dedicated to Sustainable Agriculture

A background in business combined with your biology expertise can put you on the right path.

• Business: This improves your leadership skills, teaches you how to collaborate in person and virtually and expands your horizons so you are aware of the global implications of your actions. It may also prepare you to approach policy-makers, such as the USDA, to subsidize production of foods using sustainable methods. You can use your negotiation skills to persuade companies to invest in start-ups for sustainable agriculture.
• Biology: This degree teaches you about nutrient and water needs to sustain life, ecology and ecosystems and natural resource management.

Harmful farming practices and uncontrolled development are harmful to the environment and to people. Sustainable agriculture can protect ecosystems, fight hunger on behalf of a billion people worldwide and encourage healthy eating. Sustainable agriculture desperately needs knowledgeable and committed advocates.

So, what will you do with your biology degree?

• The planet you inhabit
• The global regulatory environment
• Your corporate bottom line

By migrating to cloud computing and implementing other green technologies, you can make a simultaneous positive contributions to the world and your profit margins. Companies looking to adopt remote servers have probably heard about how a cloud strategy can save them money in operations costs, but the rewards are far greater than just that.

Your Planet

When information technology was first adopted on a large scale, businesses claimed that it heralded the beginning of the “paperless office.” Rather than a green revolution, we have ended up with printers churning out more paper than ever, mounds of toxic electronic waste and skyrocketing energy consumption in the production and use of computers. As a corporate citizen, as well as a parent or grandparent or just person who cares about the planet we are bequeathing to future generations, you probably worry about the adverse effects of IT on the planet. Rather than this being in conflict with your role as a businessperson, it’s complementary, because many strategies that are good for the planet are also good for your bottom line.

Regulatory Climate

Increasingly, especially in the European Union, governments are beginning to implement forms of carbon tax and other regulations designed to ensure that individuals and corporations pay for the impacts of their carbon footprints making it prudent to take a proactive stance towards carbon footprint reduction.

Green IT and Your Bottom Line

Most of the things you do to reduce the carbon footprint of your department also save you money. Possibilities include:

• Power management strategies, such as using power strips to turn off devices completely rather than leaving them in standby mode

• Investing in power efficient hardware and cooling systems

• Avoiding excess IT hardware capacity
• Maximizing the life of systems by maintenance and upgrades rather than frequent replacement

• Migrating to cloud computing strategies

Green Cloud Strategy

There are several reasons why migrating to cloud systems can reduce your carbon footprint:

• Cloud systems have much higher throughput than your own servers would due to scale advantages in load-balancing.

• Cloud servers can be situated in areas like Iceland with green power and naturally cool underground facilities.

• Larger servers can have less carbon footprint per unit of data storage or processing power.

• Reduces the need to move physical equipment or buy new servers as you move offices, shift tasks to different locations or implement a globalized computing strategy.

Your Business and Your World

Charles Erwin Wilson famously said, “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.” Although the statement has been misinterpreted as self-serving, it was actually a statement of corporate social responsibility, making the point that what is good for our country – or our world – can be good business practice. So too, green computing improves not just your public relations, but your profitability as well.

The statistics. As previously mentioned, interest (and belief) in global warming waxes and wanes. In March of 2012, a little over sixty percent of the public does believe in global warming, at least on a certain scale, while twenty-six percent of the public seems to think it’s a hoax or a political stunt. That is a marked increase since the poll taken in spring of 2010, when only fifty percent of the people believed in global warming . . . but a major decrease from the original poll revealing seventy-five percent belief.

What makes a believer? It seems that most people decide whether or not to believe in global warming based on the year’s weather. If the year seems to be marked by extremes in cold, belief goes down, while the opposite is true in times of extreme heat. The fact is, though, that global warming is not based on temporary climate changes, so the current weather gives very little indication of what is happening in the big picture.

Science versus politics. According to polls, very little people – about one in ten, to be exact – actually rely on scientific studies to form educated opinions about global warming. Apparently, politics has more to do with belief or disbelief. Therefore, when a politician takes on the global warming platform, it can either harm or benefit the cause, depending on the politician’s popularity.

Although there is no definitive answer as to just how real global warming is, there is some real science that supports the belief that the climate is changing. The real question is, “what can we do about it?” Unfortunately, it seems the majority of people are only concerned with that question when they are concerned with seeing their politician of choice move up the ranks.

About the Author: Nada Villarrvel does all she can to live a life as green as possible. When she’s not writing about green living, she can be found sipping the oolong tea her children got her from www.goldenmoontea.com while researching family outings.

No matter what you feed your plants to care for them with spray tops and atomizers can make the process more effective and better for the plants. The right plastic bottles can make creating various spray cans and other water-delivery mechanisms easier, and small plastic containers are also ideal for holding fertilizer amendments as necessary. Of course, decorative bottles also make great plant pots for certain species. There are several types of plants that prefer to be watered with a mist, while others are the happiest to have the water poured or delivered directly into the soil.

Many people neglect this aspect of watering plants, but it is important to understand the way each plant wants to be watered. For example, succulents and other desert plants that evolved in arid climates are not used to having their leaves exposed to much moisture, so they prefer to be watered at the roots. This type of plant would be happiest if the water seeped in from outside it’s pot, into the dirt. On the other hand, plants like orchids that often gather some of their water and all their nutrients from water running down the trees and rocks to which they cling come from very humid climates, and as such benefit a great deal from being kept moist, such as by spraying them using plastic bottles with an atomizer or spray nozzle. can easily be found at bottle suppliers you may find online.

Many other plants also benefit from spaying. This is especially true of tropical plants, but in general any plant that doesn’t need to keep its leaves dry will be healthier with a quick spritz of water once a week. This amount can be adjusted and increased in particularly dry settings such as during the cold of winter or in office buildings where the heater or air conditioner is always running. In this environment, the plant will lose more water than usual through its leaves. Keeping them moist can help combat this and is better than putting more water into the soil because the roots cannot absorb the water any faster.

Outdoor plants can be more difficult to effectively water, but the same principles for spaying them with plastic bottles apply. It’s important not to water plants in any way when they are in direct sunlight or during the hottest part of the day. This can expose the plants to the risk of burning and is wasteful as much of the water will evaporate.

Part of maintaining plants is watering them properly, and plastic bottles and plastic containers and spray nozzles are often effective tools to make this job easier.  If you need to find

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48 percent of CEOs polled for the PWC survey said that developing greener products and services is an important part of their innovation strategy. Furthermore, 83 percent confirmed that sustainability is a major priority. Part of this may stem from worry about access to natural resources and the impact of dwindling traditional fuel sources on energy prices – 75 percent of those polled said energy costs are a concern compared with 40 percent of CEOs overall. Obviously, if natural forces and energy costs make environmentally responsible and sustainable practices  more economically efficient than other courses of action and strategies, everyone who can will attempt to move in this direction. And based on increasingly undeniable data about not just global climate change but also global warming, as well as initiatives and incentives to encourage this type of behavior, it is reasonable to expect chemical deal advisors to view firms and targets that fall behind on this metric as less desirable.

Part of the pressure to become greener comes from simple, if often criticized, goals like the reduced carbon emissions standards produced by the Copenhagen accords. Though recent climate summits such as the follow up meeting in Mexico in 2010 may not have made much headway in laying out specific, industry-based emission standards based on global climate goals, there is more momentum in that direction every quarter. It won’t be long until most governments have some sort of emissions cap that is agrees to and will pass on to companies in some form or another. Chemicals companies may have a more direct impact on a wider array of pollution channels than many other sectors do. When these become a reality, polluting will be expensive and those chem. Companies that don’t have strategies in place to meet those restrictions will immediately lose value.

Of course, downstream effects like manufactures’ and retailers’ ability to capitalize on peoples’ increasing willingness to pay more for products that come from environmentally responsible companies will also impact many players’ bottom lines. Chemical deal advisors with their fingers on the slow pulse of change in this regard will be increasingly incorporating the short- and long-term impact of environmentally responsible developments into their deal valuations and changing the mixture of factors that matter.