I try to limit my use of disposables as much as possible. Reusing something is, after all, the greenest option. But it’s not always practical. For an office kitchen or corporate event, it may not make sense to have reusable plates that could be broken or lost.  At the same time, all those boxes of plastic plates won’t biodegrade any time soon. In fact, they’ll probably still be around for thousands of years. On top of it all, they’re made from oil, a nonrenewable resource that requires intensive processing. Some plastic plates can technically be recycled, but most recycling facilities will ultimately reject and trash plastics that are greasy or oily. That makes for some pretty dim prospects for recycling plates that have come in contact with any food. All and all, while it’s really convenient, disposable tableware is basically an eco-nightmare all around.

So, I was intrigued when I found some “eco-friendly” alternatives to disposable plastics. But at the same time, I was skeptical. Could something that’s disposable ever really be eco-friendly? After digging deep into this question, I think the answer is a clear yes. In fact, I feel so good about these products that Green Irene is now offering a line of disposable tableware.

So what is this magic material? In a word, sugar – the source of many wonderful things. Green Irene’s plates, bowls, and cups are made from bagasse, a byproduct created during sugarcane processing. Before it was used for tableware, bagasse was burned as waste. Turning this waste product into something useful is much greener than cutting down forests to make paper plates. These products can be torn up and put in your indoor or outdoor composter. They can also be sent to a municipal compost facility, or recycled along with your paper products. Green Irene’s bagasse items can handle hot and cold foods, and they’re even safe for microwave use.

For more information about Green Irene’s disposable tableware, check out Ask Green Irene entry #1204. If you are not a member (which you are when you get a  Green Home Makeover or Green Office Makeover), your local eco-consultant can help you select and order Green Irene’s recommended eco-friendly plates, bowls, cups and utensils.

Rosamaria Caballero
The Original Green Irene Eco-Consultant
rosamaria.caballero@greenirene.com

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a form of business self-regulation to incorporate social and environmental concerns. It represents a business model that adheres to laws, ethical standards, and international norms.

As part of the business model, businesses have to take into account the impact of their activities on the environment, employees, communities, stakeholders, and other members of the public. In short, CSR represents the deliberate inclusion of the public’s interest in a business’ decisionmaking to ensure a triple bottom line that considers the planet, people, and profits.

In general, CSR involves some kind of standardized reporting that allows the business to collect information on how it is making progress on various fronts. Businesses that engage in CSR typically focus on some or all of the following:

• Environment: This requires a look at the environmental impacts of products and services, as well as what the business does outside the company to improve the environment.
• Employees: It’s important to ensure that all employees are cared for adequately. Businesses usually focus on workplace conditions, benefits, living wages, and training.
• Communities: Engaging the surrounding communities is an important part of not just creating good human capital that can serve the business, but also securing a reputation that can further establish the business.
• Regulations: Respecting regulations to the fullest and often exceeding them is part of being socially responsible.
• Crisis Preparedness: Being ready to address business crises and ensure safety for employees and surrounding communities is critical. Having plans ready and tried are important in ensuring minimal losses during times of crises.

To learn more about CSR and how to implement it, sign up to Ask Green Irene to get implementation details.

You always hear about the need for businesses to go green. This implies that the managers of businesses have to make decisions and take actions that move the business in a green direction. Rarely do you hear about the need for employees to do their part as well. Employees can in fact play an important role in helping a business go green. Here are five ways employees can be green on the job.

1) Cut paper waste. Instead of printing items and ordering print versions of magazines, newspapers, etc., read them online. It can save money and cut waste at the same time. If you will print, use Ecofont and print double-sided.

2) Use public transportation. Do you drive even though there’s public transportation available? Cut your transportation costs and slash your carbon footprint by using public transportation or carpooling to get to work.

3) Take your lunch. Are you used to going out and buying your lunch? Lunch purchased outside typically carries significant packaging that ends up thrown away. If you make your lunch at home, not only will you save money and enjoy of a typical household activity, but you will also cut on waste significantly and have the choice of making meals that are healthy, local, and organic.

4) Conserve. Just like you can cut on paper waste, you can conserve energy and water at work. If your workspace uses inefficient lighting and appliances, make sure you get energy efficient lighting and appliances. If the bathroom sink wastes a lot of water through leaks and traditional faucets, notify managers to get the leaks fixed and ask for aerators to be installed. When you leave a room, turn off the light. Conserving at work should be just as if you were conserving at home.

5) Go toxic-free. If you get your area cleaned regularly, make sure you use toxic-free cleaners. You can also get plants in your area to absorb toxic gases in the air, and ensure that any furniture and other materials purchased don’t contain toxic substances like formaldehyde.

To learn more about what can be done at work, sign up to Ask Green Irene, a comprehensive green search engine that has a lot more information.

Many businesses have their own vehicle fleets to ship items or carry out business activities. Such businesses have a significant carbon footprint from transportation that can be reduced by taking simple and big steps towards reducing fuel consumption. In the long-run, most of these steps can accrue significant savings to businesses with vehicle fleets. Here we provide five tips your business can take to green its fleet.

1) Purchase hybrid or plug-in vehicles. Hybrid vehicles run on a combination of gasoline and electricity, while plug-in vehicles run entirely on electricity, increasing energy efficiency substantially. These options can help reduce fuel consumption drastically, saving money in the long term.

2) Run trucks on biodiesel. Diesel engines are becoming increasingly more efficient for trucks than gasoline engines. The newest models are polluting far less. In addition, these engines can run on biodiesel, an increasingly popular fuel that can substantially reduce emissions. Whenever possible, try running your trucks on biodiesel.

3) Conduct regular maintenance. To ensure that your car is burning fuel efficiently, make sure you give it a tune-up regularly (including keeping tires filled up well). This will help keep the engine running smoothly. In addition, every time you change an essential liquid, like motor oil, make sure you discard of it appropriately.

4) Opt for car-sharing program. If your business’ use is sparse and you’re in a metropolitan area, consider opting for a car-sharing program instead. This will allow you to drop the cost of keeping an unused vehicle and also save substantially on carbon emissions. Examples are ZipCar and WeCar.

5) Avoid unnecessary rides. If your destination is reachable using public transportation, encourage the use of public transportation instead. Only keep vehicle use for destinations out of bounds by public transport.

Let’s face it. Your business probably gets some form of junk mail every day. Vendors offering non-related products, banks offering loans or credit cards, and catalogs pouring in non-stop. Junk mail not only costs dearly in trees cut, but also in money wasted for no particular reason. And these days, it’s not just in the mail; junk mail is now also moved around electronically, wasting a lot of server bandwidth that requires energy to run.

Reducing unwanted benefit can have several benefits to your business. First, of course, you’ll be reducing your business’ footprint as paper use and delivery-related carbon emissions will be cut. Your employees will also save a great amount of time checking junk mail, which can instead be used to increase productivity and therefore earnings, in addition to reduce your waste bill. All of these things can help towards reducing the more than 100 million trees cut down each year, 4.5 billion gallons of water used, and billions of dollars wasted to create 4.5 million tons of junk mail in the U.S.

Here are five tips to reducing junk mail:

1. Sign up to a junk mail reduction service. There are a few services online that work for you to reduce your junk mail. They provide easy steps for you to opt out of junk mail, phonebooks, and even telemarketing. Some will even go as far as to do it all for you for a fee. Check out the EcoLogical Mail Coalition (free), EcoCycle (free), and 41Pounds (not free).

2. Omit your address online. Try to online include names, phone numbers, and e-mails on business cards and websites, but not your office address. When signing up for services, deals, and promotions, don’t include your address. If you need to include your address, put in a random one or just put an X.

3. Opt Out of Catalogs. There is a free service called Catalog Choice that allows you to opt-out of many catalogs listed online. They also help you indicate how junk catalogs can reach you, making it almost impossible for them to send you anything. Check it out to learn more.

4. Opt Out of Phonebooks. Similar to the National No-Call Registry, there is a service called YellowPagesGoesGreen that allows you to opt out of local Yellow and White pages so you don’t receive unnecessary phonebooks.

5. Unsubscribe from Junk E-mail. You may have a spam filter in use to get rid of junk e-mail, but all this does is put junk e-mail in a different place. Spam filters don’t reduce server  usage, and therefore don’t do anything about reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from servers. To help stop even junk e-mail, periodically check your spam folder and unsubscribe from unwanted e-mails.

Paper use in offices is a big consumer of wood in the United States. Representing roughly 50% of the waste bill from the average business, paper and paperboard waste account for up to 40% of landfill solid waste. U.S. offices print about 12.1 trillion sheets of paper annually, contributing about 9% of the manufacturing sector’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Similarly, printing requires a lot of petroleum-derived ink, energy, and plastic materials like cartridges. These add another chunk to the huge green toll businesses have from printing alone. Clearly, reducing paper use can go a long way in helping businesses save money and go green at the same time.

Here are five tips that can help businesses reduce paper waste:

1. Use Eco-Font. The prints your business makes for ‘daily use’ not only use paper, but also ink. Your ink cartridges could last longer if your fonts required less ink to print. The Ecofont is a new font that allows you to do just that. The font has small circles removed from it, which are visible when the text size is extremely large but not when used at the normal size 12 or size 10. Click here to learn more.

2. Use Double-Sided Printing. Purchasing a double-sided printer will not only cut paper use in half, but it will also save you money. The initial investment is typically paid within a reasonable timeframe, and any savings after that are above your costs.

3. Edit, Read, and Write Online. Ask your employees to get used to doing most things requiring text online. They can edit documents online; read newspapers and magazines online; and send messages to others online. Switch your current subscriptions to online versions and begin cutting down on paper waste.

4. Promote Reuse. You don’t have to necessary recycle used paper right away. If you print on just one side, use the other side as scrap paper. You can also use used paper for many other purposes. Click here to learn about ways to use used paper.

5. Recycle! Make sure you not only recycle paper that you can’t reuse, but also cartridges! Most manufacturers today take back used cartridges. Just take it to a local retail store and hand it in there. Finally, make sure your business is recycling paper. Place recycling bins around marked with flyers for employees.

With the nation seeming to enter a new green era, green “this” and green “that” is everywhere. There are many well-intentioned businesses that want to sell and offer legitimate products and services. Others try to use what they’re doing to show that their products and services are green and therefore should be preferred over others. However, there are some businesses that tend to go too far in advertising their green efforts. In such cases, it is said that such businesses are greenwashing the public.

Greenwashing is the unjustified protrayal of green virtue by a company, an industry, a government, a politician, or even a non-governmental organization to create a pro-environmental image, sell a product or a policy, or rehabilitate their standing with the public and decision makers after being embroiled in some controversy. The problem with greenwashing is that eventually the public finds out about it, making matters worse.

To help you avoid greenwashing, here are 5 tips that you should keep in mind when conducting any activities related to your business:

1. Avoid Giving To Inconsistent Causes. Many businesses tend to help fund politicians, organizations, and projects that may be aligned with what they do. To ensure transparency, make sure your business isn’t funding anything that’s not aligned with the green principles you are committing to.

2. Provide Transparency. If you are going to claim that you are green or something you offer is green, make sure you show why. The public will want access to any information that supports your claim, so make sure that you are explaining your claims in detail to avoid any public attacks.

3. Report Your Efforts Periodically. Many companies are now releasing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports periodically. These reports highlight efforts to go green in a transparent way and provide a vision for how the business will continue to green its operations, products, and services.

4. Respond to Critics With Moderation. Some companies go too far in trying to silence their critics. This only shows the public that the business may be hiding information. You want to make sure you treat every critic with moderation by providing honest and substantial information that addresses their concerns. If there is something wrong that they mention, moderately acknowledge it and explain how you plan to address it (and then make sure you do).

5. Be Consistent. Make sure your words are matched with appropriate action. If you say you will do something, make sure the business devotes enough resources to ensure it happens in the way it was explained. One mistake many businesses make is to exaggerate something to be done and then realize the impact is much smaller than what was claimed. Make sure your actions match your words to satisfy the public.

If you need help in designing a plan to remain free from greenwashing attacks, consult your local Eco-Consultant. You can get going with greening your operations by getting a Green Office Makeover. Sign up today and start going green!

Business travel today is a significant portion of all travel. Businesses send employees to conferences, for field work and consultancy, and to perform investigations. It is important to Go GREEN in the office (which you can do with a Green Office Makeover), but it is also important to go green outside. Here are ten ways you can green your business travel without sacrificing their goals.

1. Use Teleconferencing Services. Go green by selecting a meeting “method” that doesn’t involve travel, such as phone or online conferencing. Sometimes nothing beats an in-person handshake, but very often videoconferencing is just as productive, as well as cheaper, easier, and more eco-friendly. Teleconferencing can be done via a conference call, data conferencing (via Adobe Acrobat Connect, Twiddla, IBM Lotus Sametime Entry, Convenos, and WebHuddle), Internet teleconferencing (via a instant messaging user interface such as Yahoo! Messenger, Live Messenger, Skype, or Google Talk) or video conferencing.

2. Travel by Train or Bus. Avoid the long security lines at the airport and book a ticket on a train or intercity bus. Your trip will leave a lower carbon footprint and you might even enjoy the slower pace. Train or bus transportation is the perfect replacement for commuter flights and drives and is much more environmentally-friendly. Although it might technically take longer to reach your destination than a plane, when you factor in the typical delays associated with air travel, (including rush-hour congestion getting to the airport, security delays, weather delays, and car rental delays) the time difference may become insignificant. Also, bus and train passengers can often disembark in a central downtown location, minimizing or eliminating the need for ground transportation.

3. Fly with Green-Leaning Airlines. From recycling to carbon offsets, some airlines are promoting policies that mitigate air travel’s environmental impacts. Airplanes contribute to global warming by producing 600 million tons of carbon dioxide a year and US airports generate approximately 425,000 tons of garbage. Click here for a list of the top 10 green airlines.

4. Choose a Green Hotel. Leverage your green business muscle when choosing corporate hotel partners. Gauge their eco-commitment and make it known that “green” matters to you and your employees. Try to stay within walking distance of your meeting, or somewhere easily accessible via public transit. Use caution, however, as many hotels are only “green-leaning.” Some only offer a towel/sheet reuse program and recycling containers in guest rooms, whereas others pamper guests with an array of high-end eco-amenities (think solar-powered hot water, luxurious organic cotton sheets, and fine bamboo-fiber stationery). Click here to find a green hotel near you.

5. Offset Your Travel Emissions. It is difficult for even the most energy-efficient business to run carbon-free. For those inevitable travel-related carbon emissions, there are carbon offsets to help you and your company get down to zero. GreenIrene sells BeGreen carbon offsets for electricity, vehicle, and airplane travel that use your money to buy renewable energy credits (RECs) from solar, wind, and biomass facilities and fund reforestation projects around the country.

It is summer time and your office just finished getting a Green Office Makeover, the first critical step in making your business green. You’ve asked your Eco-Consultant to tell you about innovative ways to further green up while cutting costs, and she has recommended green roofs and green walls, green features that not only beautify your building, but also save you money.

Green roofs are basically roofs with soil supporting plant life. They can be intensive (with more than one foot of soil) or extensive (with 2-6 inches of soil). Similarly, green walls support plant life and can make your office building seem fully integrated with its natural environment. Both of these features provide incredible benefits to your office building if well built. These include:

• Insulating from energy losses and sound, reducing energy bills during the summer;
• Reducing air and water pollution;
• Reducing stormwater runoff;
• Reducing urban heat island effect;
• Open green space and natural habitat;
• Increasing the service life of the roof membrane;
• Increaing the building’s property value; and
• Potential production of fruits and vegetables.

Both of these features are ideal for your office building. They will give your building a green spin and at the same time cut your costs. The payback period for the investment is usually reasonable, so that you will save money over the lifetime of these features. If you want to learn more about how you can build these features in your office building, contact your local Eco-Consultant. If you haven’t yet, make sure you get a Green Office Makeover first.

Our offices are some of the biggest producers of waste. While there’s a lot that can be done with waste after it leaves our offices, there’s a lot that can be done in the workplace to prevent waste in the first place. Waste is pretty much everything that we no longer want to use and is a result of something we used. It includes used paper, plastics, food, metals, cardboard, electronics, wood, packaging, water, and many other items we use in our offices. When you add it up, it translates to more than 250 million tons of solid waste collected in municipalities, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s latest assessment.

Everybody knows that recycling is critical to reducing waste, but what can you do to reduce waste generated at work in the first place? Here are five simple things you can do right away to have a big impact on waste production:

1) Avoid and Reuse Paper Products. Paper products are the biggest contributor to municipal solid waste, accounting for some 30% of all municipal solid waste when compost is excluded. To reduce paper waste: pay all your bills online, read your news online, and avoid having to print anything you can read online; reuse paper for packaging or as scrap paper instead of recycling it right away; opt-out of junk mail using MailStopper; and use reusable towels instead of disposable paper towels.

2) Compost. Believe it or not, food and yard trimmings are some of the biggest contributors to individuals’ ecological footprints (representing some 25% of all municipal solid waste). Instead of sending food to the landfill, why not put it to use by compost it? Food waste in offices can be regularly collected and taken to a composting operation. Green Irene offers two composters for outdoor and indoor application at ShopGreenIrene, so be sure to check them out. You can also donate food to local organizations that provide food to the homeless and very poor through food banks.

3) Conserve Water. As you may know, water is going to be one of the most precious resources this century as its supplies dwindle. The wasteful use of water is actually a big contributor to our ecological footprint, especially in water-stressed areas like the Southwestern U.S. As a result, one of the best things you can do is to help conserve water by avoiding bottled water; cutting shower time to five minutes; changing your showerheads and installing aerators (see ShopGreenIrene for these); and conserving energy (read here to learn why).

4) Stick to a List. When going shopping for office supplies, make a list of items you actually need. Don’t be tempted to buy items that later on you won’t really use. A list not only allows you to purchase items you really need, but it will also save you money and space at work.

5) Recycle Electronics. Typically, offices tend to recycle the traditional items, such as paper, cardboard, glass, and plastic containers. Not too many think about electronics, and as a result a huge amount ends up in our landfills or shipped overseas. The problem of electronic waste, or e-waste, is that it may contain very toxic substances that can harm human health. As a result, make it a priority to reduce electronic waste by first donating it for reuse (you can do this with cellphones and many other electronic items) and then ensuring that the rest is recycled (many manufacturers will take electronics back for recycling or reuse).

Reducing your office’s waste is an important step to going green and reducing your footprint. You can go further by learning about what else you can do to reduce waste and your general ecological footprint through a local Eco-Consultant.