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.

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.