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If you’re like me, you hate getting those spam faxes for great deals on mortgages. Not only do I not need to hear about any more impossibly good mortgages, I certainly don’t want any more trees to be killed to tell me about them. And no matter that spam by fax is illegal, according to the Federal Trade Commission—it still happens. The good news is that there are companies that solve the dilemma. It may not stop the spammers, but it does stop from needlessly killing trees.

Faxmicro (www.faxmicro.com) is only one of the companies that allows you to send and receive faxes without using any paper. This company offers a subscription starting at $4.95/ month.

For not much more than the price of a coffee, you get a fax number and all of your faxes are sent to your e-mail’s inbox. In addition to helping save paper, this is certainly the best part of the service—no matter where you are in the world, as long as you have access to your e-mail, you will also have access to your faxes. And, since the faxes automatically show up in your inbox a PDF file, you can decide which faxes—and which pages to print out. So, no more unnecessary faxes and no more wasteful cover pages. Plus for $.05 a page, you can send faxes anywhere in the U.S. and for an extra fee you can send faxes internationally.

With such conveniences, there’s no excuse not to reduce the paper clutter in your office and help our environment by reducing your consumption of natural resources.

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If your work requires a lot of driving time, it may be time to invest in some environment-saving auto technology. No, that does not mean that you have to go out and buy a hybrid—though it’s not a bad idea. But thankfully there is another solution for all those people who don’t want to buy a new car or for those who are dedicated to non-hybrid brands. A new environmentally-friendly product for your car has just hit the market, called the Blade (www.bladeyourride.com). You attach it to your tailpipe and it decreases emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases.

Specifically, the Blade reduces emission of CO2 (greenhouse gas); reduces emissions of pollutants such as carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides; and reduces emission of toxic particulate material.

Need more fodder to convince you that this is a worthy investment? Here it is: The Blade increases your fuel economy. Based on testing in various driving conditions, vehicles achieve 11 to 34 percent increases in fuel economy when using the Blade.

And if you happen to be one of the early-adopters of hybrids, it turns out that the ultimate vehicle is a hybrid with a Blade on it. While your hybrid runs on battery at slow speeds, you’re still burning emissions while you’re on the highway. But now, you can cut down on those too.

So, hybrid or not, here’s your chance to get out on the open road and drive to your heart’s content—without the guilt of destroying the beautiful air around you.

If it’s come time for your office to move, then you know the drill—you buy hundreds of boxes; stuff them full of papers, electronic equipment and tchotchkes; move said boxes; empty the boxes; and recycle (hopefully you don’t throw them away!) perfectly good once-used boxes. And, until now, there really hasn’t been another choice but to waste hundreds of boxes for a move—after all, it’s unlikely that you’re going to go dumpster diving for boxes at the local grocery store for the sake of your entire office.

Thankfully, there is finally another option. Rather than buying all of your boxes at Office Depot or Staples, you can buy them at UsedCardboardBoxes.com (www.usedcardboardboxes.com), where all of the boxes are “rescued” and resold. So, instead of cutting down trees for your next move, you can use boxes that are previously used, factory misprints, overruns or customer returns. You may end up with boxes that are printed on or have handwriting or packing labels on them, but other than that they are in perfectly good shape. The best part is that these boxes cost less than new boxes, so you also save money in your move. And most boxes will arrive at your doorstep within two days of ordering.

Of course, to pack breakable items, remember to use earth-friendly packing materials. While you and your staff go through files, shred all of those papers that would end up in recycling and use the shreds as packing material. If you do need to buy additional packing material, buy biodegradable packing peanuts, which dissolve in water and leave no toxic waste, or recycled packing peanuts, which are made from the remains of other loose fill. And if you need to buy bubble wrap, make sure it is also made of recycled materials.

Recycled packing materials are easy to find—they are at all standard office supply stores. Biodegradable packing peanuts may take a little more work to track down, but it shouldn’t be too hard. If your local office supply store doesn’t have them in-stock, then www.staples.com likely does.

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Now that you’ve started using every single piece of paper in your office twice, you may ask—what do I do for those business cards, brochures, receipts, invoices, letterhead…. anything that doesn’t come off of that office printer? There is a simple solution, of course. Choose a green printer. But don’t just take the printer’s word for it that the company does its best to protect the environment. Make sure it has the stamp of approval from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international organization that brings people together to find solutions which promote responsible stewardship of the world’s forests.

In order to meet FSC’s strict standards for certification, green printers’ processes include:

·        Recycling paper and inks

·        Using vegetable-based inks for print

·        Using pastes as ink for digital presses

·        Using FSC-certified paper and print products

By following these standards, the printers cause less harm to the environment and contribute to conservation, responsible management, and community-level benefits for people near the forests that provide paper.

To find a FSC-certified printer, go here: http://www.fscus.org/paper/ and then click on the “Certified Printers” pdf file on the right.

Just think, if enough companies switch over to FSC-certified printers, the FSC system might actually meet its goal—to eliminate habitat destruction, water pollution, displacement of indigenous peoples and violence against people and wildlife that often accompanies logging.

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Making your office greener can be as simple as skipping your next visit to Staples or Office Depot. Instead, head on over to The Green Office, which is as close as your keyboard (www.thegreenoffice.com).

This online retailer sells calendars, briefcases and pens, batteries, printers, phones, calculators, ink and toner, furniture, cleaning supplies, cups, snacks and utensils. In other words, they have everything that your local office supplier has. And they specialize in recycled, environmentally-friendly and sustainable business supplies

In this store each product is rated on a variety of key indicators of social and environmental responsibility: recycled content; biodegradability or compostability; number of reductions met in chemical content; and if it is third-party certified. There is even an indicator if a product is simply a conventional product and doesn’t meet any special green standards. This category is included since—unfortunate as it is—it is simply impossible to be 100 percent green. And this way you don’t have to shop more than one place.

So, next time you go office supply shopping, head to your computer and pick the certified nontoxic pencils; water-based ink pens; acid-free, recycled paper; bowls made from sugar cane; and shelves made from post-consumer recycled steel content.

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Just because you are using a green hosting company—thereby reducing your carbon footprint on the environment—it’s not time to sit back and revel in knowing that your job is done. As you know, the environment needs as much help from us as we can give, and it will not take care of itself. Thankfully, there are additional small things that you can do to reduce environmental harm, which will only take little time and effort from you. And it really is the small things that add up!

One easy way to reduce your environmental footprint is to reduce the paper that you use by half. OK, maybe not half—but close to half. How, you ask? Reprint on the back of used paper before you recycle it.

After all, we only need much of what we print temporarily—and it is ultimately going to be discarded anyway. So, when you go to a meeting and get a stack of papers, remember to print on the back of those pages before recycling them. Or, when you get a sales letter in the mail, remember to print on the back of those pages before recycling them. Or, when you print something to show to a colleague, remember to print on the back of those pages before recycling them. …. You get the idea.

The logistics of printing on the backs of pages only takes a bit of planning. If you have your own dedicated printer, just keep it stocked with “recycled” paper and switch to “clean” sheets before a print job that requires it. If you share printers with colleagues, simply dedicate one printer to “clean” paper and another to “recycled” paper. Once everyone in the office gets used to the system, you’ll be amazed at how well the system works. Plus, you’ll ultimately save money, too. After all, when you use less “clean” paper, you’ll spend less money to purchase that new “clean” paper.

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You’d be hard-pressed not to hear doom-and-gloom stories about the environment, greenhouse gases, and global warming these days. With all the bad news, most of us want to know how we can help. We’ve unplugged our chargers; we’ve replaced our incandescent bulbs with energy-efficient fluorescent ones; we’ve even started taking shorter showers (or we’ve thought about it). But it’s not like we can really hook up our homes and businesses to wind power. Or can we? Well, OK—no we can’t. But we can use the service of TreeCentric, a company that has done the next best thing—purchased Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs).

TreeCentric is a progressive, privately-owned U.S.-based company that provides website and email hosting services, as well as domain registration. TreeCentric help businesses take responsibility and make a difference in the world through everyday business activities. For instance, when customers support TreeCentric by signing up for a service such as email hosting, TreeCentric in turn, supports the earth by reducing its footprint on the earth.

How do RECs work? While we all need electricity to run our businesses, the downside is that these resources pollute our air, land, and water—and contribute to global climate change. Thankfully, renewable energy sources such as solar electric and wind can produce electricity without the same negative impact. TreeCentric ensures that the electricity it uses is made from such renewable energy sources—and, therefore, doesn’t produce greenhouse gas emissions. To do so, TreeCentric purchases REC certificates from an authorized renewable energy facility that generates electricity.

For instance, TreeCentric purchases credits from a renewable energy facility like a windmill farm. And this essentially displaces the need for other non-renewable sources—like a coal plant—to provide TreeCentric with power.

TreeCentric is also Green-e certified, ensuring that TreeCentric’s renewable energy meets the nation’s leading independent certification and verification standards.ikoni