Executive Suites Virtual Offices Reduce Carbon Emissions by 94%

Did you know that by giving up your expensive office lease and going with an executive suite you can reduce your carbon emissions? Don’t take our word for it. Go to CarbonFund.org and fill out their online carbon emission calculator. You will be amazed at what you learn.

Recycling at Work

Whether you work at home, in your own building or a serviced office or executive suite, you know you could be greener. You recycle at home, so why not get recycling at work?

Telecommuting: Ecological and Economical

Want to save your company money and contribute to sustainability? Explain to your boss that letting you telecommute would save the company $10,000 per year.

A study by the Telework Research Network outlines the significant benefits, both economic and ecologic, that can be realized by having employees work remotely.

Green Up Your Office Space

1. Establish a committee to coordinate and track your green office processes. Arrange a regularly scheduled meeting time to monitor success. Offer incentives to employees for participating on the committee, like gift certificates or free lunches.

5-mile Commute

As I made my way into work yesterday morning I found my self stuck in traffic once again, alongside thousands of other motorists and a simple yet powerful question came to mind… What would America and the world look like if no one could travel more than five miles (or even less) to and from work each day?  How would this affect businesses, civil engineering,  society, the commercial office market and our environment?  I’d like to read your comments about this idea.

Green Office Tips

Going green at work is just as easy as it is at home. There are things everybody — from the janitor on up to the boss — can do to cut down on energy consumption. Here are a few tips to put into practice today.

• Check to see if your utility company performs energy audits of office buildings. They can typically tell you where you’re being wasteful and offer alternatives and fixes.

• Turn off the lights when you leave your office, the bathroom, the kitchen or a conference room.

• Be mindful of your paper use. Make sure you reuse misprinted pages as scrap paper. Print on both sides of each page. Use chlorine-free paper. Recycle.

• Screensavers may save your monitor, but they don’t save electricity. During work hours, set your computer to go to sleep automatically after 15 minutes of inactivity. This can cut electricity use by up to 70 percent.

• Go paperless. Send out email invoices and statements instead of paper documents. Store background documents digitally.

• Encourage your cleaning staff to use non-toxic cleaning products.

• Forgo if you can the use of overhead lighting and use lamps with compact, long-life fluorescent light bulbs.

• Buy furnishings constructed of natural materials.

• Depend on reusable items: water bottles, food containers, coffee mugs, etc.

• Ride your bike, walk or take public transportation to work.

• Avoid products with excess packaging.

• Telecommute to work or make use of a virtual office.

Green Resources

Earlier this week I had the privilege of sitting in a webinar that was presented by Rachel Walls of The Golden Gate Company, LLC.  I participated in this hour long session with the goal of getting some new ideas on how I can make The Boardroom at Cherry Creek executive suites a more environmentally friendly office space.  Rachel and her colleague presented some wonderful ideas on how to make the office more environmentally friendly and we hope to put into place some of these suggestions in the coming months at our executive suite.

7 Super-Simple Ways To Be Greener At Work

Article written by Nathan Jansch, The Boardroom at Cherry Creek

We all know that we’re supposed to be greener in the way we do things.  But let’s face it, some of the environmentally friendly steps that people are proclaiming are either expensive or time consuming – or even both.  I mean really, there aren’t a lot of us who can afford to install solar panels on their home or just go out and buy a new hybrid car.  And most of us have a hard time adjusting our schedules and habits to carpool or bike to work.  So, what’s a boy (or girl) to do?

Well, there are seven super simple things that we all can do – beginning tomorrow - to make the way we work a bit more environmentally friendly.  These tips are going to revolutionize the world, nor are they going to be a magic cure for global warming, but being environmentally friendly takes both incremental change and bold new methods.

1. Sign Up For Automatic Bill Pay & Pay Your Bills Online - Most larger organizations, and even some smaller ones, offer the ability for you to pay your bill through an automatic charge to your checking account of credit card.  And for those bills that can’t be automatically debited from your accounts, almost all banks offer the ability to pay your bills online.  These electronic transactions eliminate the need for paper checks, paper envelopes and the carbon emissions associated with the delivery of a physical check.  Furthermore, these online transactions typically also have the added bonus of being free to you… so no more paying for checks, envelopes and stamps.
2. Sign Up For E-Statements & Invoices – In the same vain as the first point above, receiving your bank statements and invoices by e-mail, eliminates a great deal of paper waste and carbon emissions from them being transported to you.
3. Take Off Your Jacket & Stay Awhile – By taking off your sport coat, sweater, or other warm clothing and turning up your office temperature in the summer time, you can drastically reduce your electric needs for cooling your office.  The City of Denver turned up the temperature by four degrees in six of its office buildings during the summer of 2008 and saved nearly $30,000 dollars in energy costs in the span of just three months from June through August.  They’re planning on expanding this program to over 100 city buildings this summer and anticipate saving over $100,000 and tens of thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.  Imagine the energy savings if we all did this?
4. Turn Off Lights & Equipment When They’re Not In Use - This is a step that I think many people do naturally at home, but forget about when they get to the office.  When you directly paying the electric bill at home, you tend to be more cautious about your electricity usage than when your office is just one among thousands – but the same concept still applies.  When you leave the office for more than 5 or 10 minutes, turn the lights off as you leave.  And at the end of your day, turn off your computer, your monitor, printer and other office equipment.  Most of these electronics have “power-save” modes, but they still draw power even though they’re not in use.
5. Print Double-Sided Documents & Use Scrap Paper – This sounds really obvious, but there are 2 sides to each piece of paper… you might as well use both.  For presentations or general office use, try to print double-sided documents whenever possible.  And for jotting down notes, working out formulas, and taking care of other day-to-day tasks that require pen and paper, use the back-side of those junk-faxes and unnecessary letters that you may have received.  These simple steps can cut your paper usage nearly in half.
6. Recycle Or Shred Used Paper – So now that you’ve written on all of the usable space on both sides of your paper, recycle your waste.  Recycling your paper waste saves space in landfills and saves energy and trees as the recycled materials gets turned into items like newspaper and cardboard.  And if your office place is all like mine, you’ll find that a majority of your total waste is recyclable paper.  Since placing a paper recycling bin in my office two years ago, the amount of waste that I throw into my trash can has dropped by at over 90%.  Concerned about sensitive information on your printed pages?  Well send your documents to a shredding company and you’ll get the best of both worlds as a majority of professional shredding companies turn their shredded paper waste over to recycling companies to be further processed… ask your shredding company if they recycle, though, as not all of them do.
7. Use A Reusable Water Bottle - So you’re trying to follow the health-experts’ advice and drink plenty of water while you’re slaving away at work.  That’s great, but make certain that you drink your water from a reusable container and not a disposable plastic water bottle.  In 2006 Americans used 50 billion plastic watter bottle and threw 38 billion water bottles to landfills, the equivalent of 912 million gallons of oil or enough energy to power 190,000 homes for a year.  Or to put it another way, if laid end to end, that’s enough plastic bottles to travel from the Earth to the Moon and back 10 times.  Don’t like the taste of your local tap water?  Use your own water purification system, such as those offered by Brita.  After all more than half of the bottled water that is distributed in the U.S. is purified water coming from municipalities from around the country.

Now, as I said in my intro, none of these things are all that spectacular, but that’s the point.  They’re seven small steps that each of us can make that have a very low upfront cost (if any at all) and that can be integrated into our daily routines with ease.  Small steps can still have a very profound impact when done by a large number of people.

Leaner is Greener – Virtual Offices are Great Solutions for Eco-Conscious Businesses

By Irene Williams , Davinci Virtual

“Green” has been big business.  Now, it’s just good business.

Over the last several years, as our collective eco-conscious grew so did the market for green products and services.  Before the economy took a turn, we saw green alternatives sell extremely well, even if they came at a premium over less-green competitors.  Savvy businesses saw ‘green’ in the green movement, added more selection to the marketplace, and thus, a once fringe market gravitated toward center.  When economic conditions started to falter, we wondered if “green” would go.

The good news is that environmental awareness has not been utterly eclipsed by talk of economic woes.  Sure, sales are impacted across the board in an economy like this.  However, the green movement’s root system was already strong enough that we’re generally not compromising our eco-consciousness for budget-consciousness.  We want to do right by our environment and our bottom lines.

That’s great news for progressive companies that have embraced the “success isn’t stuff” mentality.  No matter what product or service a company may sell, it can certainly strike a chord with customers by letting them know they’re green from the inside out.  In other words you don’t have to be a purveyor of product specific to the green market to reap rewards.  The market wants to support businesses of all types and stripes that are doing their part to protect the environment.

Has your business made smart moves that can speak to the “green” in your customer base?  Even if other factors were the primary motivators for certain decisions, consider the positive green message that may also be aligned with them.

Davinci Virtual customers are part of a progressive, lean-is-green movement.  When companies opt for the pooled resources of virtual offices over cumbersome, inefficient physical office space, they have a strong selling message that is worth conveying to customers and potentials.  When given a choice, we want to support the companies that have a broader consciousness, that do the right thing in substantive ways.

Moving away from unnecessary, traditional space not only saves businesses money, it eliminates waste all around—less paper, energy and water use, fuel consumption, the list goes on and on.  Virtual office resources coupled with seamless technology enable businesses to work at full capacity without the confines of an energy-consuming building.  Being “virtual” is often equivalent to being “green.” And that can make any business a stand-out amongst its competition.

If you’ve reduced or eliminated physical office space or opted for use of virtual offices, tell that story proudly.  Your customers, partners and vendors will be inspired.  When you go virtual, you’re part of the new guard, the standard bearer for the office of the future—a leader who knows leaner is greener.

Top 10 Green Printing Practices and Tactics

Article written by Frank Salsa, PsPrint

If you are trying to help your business to go green, one of the best ways to be eco-friendly is to adopt green printing practices and ­tactics. Often,­ printed materials are ­used extensively by companies for meetings, client education, and just day-to-day business activities. By going greener in this department, you can help the environment. Here are some of the best tips for green printing practices.