Next time you have to provide drinks at a corporate event, offer your clients refreshments, or find something hydrating on a hot day, consider this: tap water provides a safe, cost-effective and environmentally-friendly alternative to bottled water. Manufacturers have worked to convince customers that paying a premium for a disposable, plastic container full of water is worth the expense. Yet a growing body of research holds that bottled water might not be worth the hype—and that your business is better off without it.
Disposable water bottles are fast becoming a serious environmental hazard. In the United States alone, 30 billion water bottles are sent to landfills every year, and every bottle takes a shocking 1,000 years to decompose. That adds up to a lot of trash. Simply producing the plastic bottles themselves generates waste: it takes 3 liters of water to produce 1 liter of bottled water, the Sierra Club reports, and a United Nations study concludes that producing bottled water for the U.S. market requires 17 million barrels of oil per year.
Bottled water generates much more waste than tap water, and generates little heath benefit in return. In fact, because of the structure of federal regulation, most tap water might actually provide a safer and cleaner alternative. Regulation of bottled water is patchy at best. Between 60-70% of the bottled water sold in the United States is exempt from all FDA regulation, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) reported in a four-year study. The same report revealed that about one fourth of bottled water is actually just bottled tap water.
Switching to tap water makes sense, both for the sake of the planet and the sake of your account book. In New York City, for example, an individual’s consumption of eight glasses of tap water per day for a year costs only 49 cents. Eight glasses of bottled water per day for a year, in contrast, costs a whopping $14,000.
Whether your business is a restaurant, a tech startup or a hair salon, offering employees and clients tap water rather than bottled water can add up to big savings over time. Providing pitchers of water in elegant glasses or reusable mugs can even serve as a marketing tool, and signal your company’s commitment to environmental responsibility. If you’re worried about the purity of tap water in your area, inexpensive water filtration systems provide a safe and easy alternative to water coolers. Encourage your employees to use reusable mugs and bottles, and if not, to recycle any bottled of water they purchase. As part of a Green Business Makeover, your local Green Irene Eco-Consultant can introduce you to many other water purity and waste reduction ideas, as well as to Green Irene’s full line of business products, including a premium 10-stage countertop water filter, reusable water bottles, modular recycling receptacles, and much more.
Sustainably yours,
Green Irene
Waste reduction can make a difference in your company’s bottom line and its environmental impact, but for California, commercial recycling is also becoming a legal requirement.
Most states already have laws in place governing the proper disposal of commercial hazardous waste like old electronics and fluorescent lighting. California is now taking the requirement one step further with AB32, a bill which would institute mandatory commercial recycling state-wide.
Under the rules currently being finalized, all businesses would be required to recycle all materials collected in their locality (or demonstrate that they do not produce waste with recyclable content). Each town or municipality would be responsible for working out the program’s details through local ordinances, and would also have responsibility for enforcement with fines for non-compliant businesses.
The program will be rolled out in California over the next two years, coming into full effect in July 2012.
So what are the implications for your business now? For those in California, get a head start by coming into compliance before the new regulations take effect. Your local Eco-Consultant can be a great resource in helping you to design and implement a company-wide recycling initiative as part of a Green Business Makeover. Your Eco-Consultant can also introduce you to Green Irene’s full line of waste reduction and recycling products, including modular recycling receptacles that can be customized to fit the needs of your business, and a durable “smiley” receptacle that will encourage employees and customers alike to recycle.
For businesses in other states, be certain that you understand the environmental regulations for your area. Making sure that you are in compliance with local regulations is important for avoiding fines or liability, and it also confirms your good stewardship of the local environment and your community’s health.
According to the EPA, the average office worker in the US uses 10,000 sheets of paper each year, which equates to about 2 pounds of paper and paperboard products every day from every worker. That’s a total of 4 million tons of paper used annually in America’s offices, and equates to the use of 465 trees per person over a lifetime.
Yet, of that amount, only about a third is recycled. Paper and cardboard still make up almost two-thirds of the waste found in landfills, and two-thirds of paper overall is composed from virgin wood material.
I can never understand why the 50% or 100% recycled printer paper costs MORE than the paper made from virgin pulp as, after all, you aren’t cutting down trees and processing them to get the raw material. But when you see numbers like this you have to think that a buck or two extra per ream for 100% recycled content makes sense… and that is why we only use that in our offices. Combine that with a paper reduction strategy and you are really on the right track to reducing that 465 trees per person number.
Recycling one ton of paper would:
- Save enough energy to power the average American home for six months.
- Save 7,000 gallons of water.
- Save 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space.
- Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one metric ton of carbon equivalent (MTCE).
Your local Eco-Consultant can work with your business on steps for paper reduction, and they can even help you in developing a sustainable paper procurement policy. Contact them today and start shedding some weight from your company’s paper usage.
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.
After starting my own eco-consultant business this past year, my eyes opened up at the amount of waste Americans go through each year. I wanted to see how much paper my company used. After doing a little research, I was amazed at the amount of office paper we consumed last year. We used approximately 9,700 reams of 8 ½ x 11 paper last year. That’s equivalent to $31,008.29. That’s a lot of paper. Below are some astonishing facts about office waste paper.
- If you were to eliminate office paper from your waste stream, you could cut your waste bill by 50% or more.
- For every ton of recycled paper it can save up to 17 trees.
- The paper industry ranks 4th in contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, and contribute 9% of the manufacturing sector’s carbon emissions.
- If the U.S could cut office paper use by just 10% it would prevent the emission of 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases (the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road).
- One year’s worth of the New York Times newspaper weighs 520 pounds. To print a Sunday edition of the NYT it takes 75,000 trees.
- With all the office paper we waste every year we could build a 12-foot high wall of paper from New York to California.
- The average American attorney uses 1 ton of paper every year.
- Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 682.5 gallons of oil (think about that next time you’re standing at the pump).
- American consumers receive 41 pounds of junk mail per year.
- US offices create 12.1 trillion sheets of paper per year.
- 40% of the solid mass in landfills is paper and paperboard waste.
- More than 100 million trees are destroyed each year to produce junk mail.
- Paper usage is rising by around 20% every year, with the average office worker using approximately 50 sheets of paper every day in the typical office.
Your mind is probably swirling with the amount of info I just provided, but ask yourself one simple question: What can I do today to reduce the amount of paper I use at home and at the office?
Luckily, Green Irene is here to help you figure out simple steps that you can take to help your office significantly reduce paper use. You can learn more by signing up for an Ask Green Irene membership. By becoming a member, you’ll have access to a wealth of green knowledge, including specific things you can do to substantially reduce paper waste. So, what are you waiting for? Ask Green Irene today!
Jim Armbrust, Green Irene Eco-Consultant in Harrisburg, PA
717-215-4030
