May 20, 2008 | Filed under: Environmental Initiatives by Nick | No Comments »

Whether you have been specifically tasked with finding ways to go green, or are just trying to get your company to be more environmentally friendly, one of the biggest challenges is to get “buy-in” from management.

As environmentally concerned employees and individuals, we look around the work-place and see all sorts of ways our companies can be less wasteful. We get excited thinking about how much difference can be made by making a series of seemingly basic changes. Unfortunately, getting our bosses on-board to actually do something ends up being a frustrating and discouraging experience.

Management is often skeptical of making changes, and go by the old saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” There is frequently a sense that taking steps to reduce the company’s environmental footprint is a grand idea, but not a practical business decision.

Therefore, the challenge for us environmentally concerned employees is to convince our bosses that the company will benefit by being greener. A skeptical manager will be much more receptive to environmental initiatives if you start with something small that quickly pays off both environmentally and financially - a “quick-win.”

Thinking about all the inefficient processes at our companies, we must identify one that is highly visible, costs the company time and money, and causes clear environmental impacts. A process that combines all three criteria is doing business with too much paper.

In a typical office, paper is used at an alarming rate with an estimated 350 pounds (35,000 sheets) discarded per employee each year. That means just one employee’s annual paper use causes about 1,000 pounds of greenhouse gases to be released, 3,300 gallons of water to be polluted, and 400 pounds of solid waste to be generated when the paper was manufactured. Using recycled paper reduces these impacts somewhat, but the company still has to buy all the paper, and recycled paper is more expensive.

Your “quick-win” can be accomplished by reducing how much paper is used in the fist place by a particularly wasteful business process - paper-based purchase orders, shipping notices and invoices. To learn more, try out our impact calculator to see the potential reductions or visit our solutions page to learn more about how to switch from paper-based transactions to paperless electronic ones.

Switching from wasteful paper-based transactions to efficient paperless ones is a “quick-win” that will reduce your company’s environmental footprint, and save time and money. When management sees that going green also saves green, they will suddenly take your other environmental proposals much more seriously.

May 9, 2008 | Filed under: Blog by Nick | No Comments »

Returning visitors may have noticed that the header navigation links have changed. For the sake of simplicity, we removed “Paper’s Problem” and “Impact Calculator” since we have graphic links to those sections in the left sidebar.

We also decided to transition our “Press Room” section to a new “Resources” section where you will find all sorts of useful information about the paper life-cycle, and how to save money and trees by taking steps to use paper more efficiently.

We hope you like the changes and we welcome your feedback!

Here is how things looked before:

Here is how they are now:

May 7, 2008 | Filed under: CleanTech by Nick | No Comments »

Today, I spent the afternoon at the Berkeley-Stanford CleanTech Conference in Menlo Park, California. The conference focused on the policies and technologies required to make solar power a large contributor to California’s and the nation’s energy portfolio.

Electricity demand is projected to increase significantly over the next 20 years, and billions of dollars are being invested in renewable power generation technologies. Although renewables currently require subsidies to be competitive with electricity generated from coal, natural gas, or nuclear, big companies and utilities like California’s PG&E are looking to Solar as a way to meet future demands. The combination of rising fuel prices and public policy pressure has convinced many that the CleanTech industry is in the early stages of a future of massive growth.

A take-home message from the event was that regardless of who wins the next election (Obama, Clinton or McCain), national climate policies will be implemented to reduce the amount of carbon the US releases. In order to prepare for such a system, it is important to be aware of the possible ways such regulation will impact your business, and what you can do to be prepared. The CleanTech industry is working hard to develop the type of efficient power generating and saving technologies that may ultimately be mandated by the US government.

An ongoing topic of discussion, and ultimately set of resources here at Cleaner Commerce will revolve around what businesses need to know and what they need to do to be prepared for future regulations. We will continue to attend events like the Berkeley-Stanford CleanTech Conference in order to keep updated on the latest developments.

May 2, 2008 | Filed under: Going Clean, Solutions by Nick | No Comments »

Ok, here’s the deal: businesses are far more concerned with the bottom line than they are about “going green.” Quite frankly, they should be. If a company loses heaps of money trying to be green, and goes out of business as a result, it can’t exactly be green anymore, can it? For a company, doing good things for the environment only makes long-term sense if it is also good for business.

Every day we are bombarded with stories and advertisements from companies like GE, and Wal-Mart proclaiming their new-found love for the environment. In reality, these companies recognized that going green boosts the bottom line. They see that customers care about their practices, efficiency initiatives save money, and they can reduce their risk of getting sued for violating environmental regulations.

The real challenge for a company considering green initiatives is to decide what exactly to do. We think the best choice is to identify and replace business processes that are both financially and environmentally wasteful.

We’ll be honest – when Cleaner Commerce’s sponsor, ADX, was started in 1992, the goal was simply to provide a better way for companies to do business. It was only later that ADX realized it also helps thousands of companies waste less paper.

Another company, GreenPrint, has developed software that prevents extra sheets of paper from being wasted when documents are printed. They promote the tree saving benefits, but the real selling point of their product is the estimated $90 per user savings in paper and ink each year. The environmental benefits are really just an added bonus to a solution that is good for business.

Cleaner Commerce likes these sorts of solutions – ones that primarily serve a business purpose, but also happen to do good things for the environment. We believe that the only realistic way businesses can reduce their environmental impacts is if there are cost-effective steps they can take to do so. Our goal is to help your business get connected with better ways to do business that also incidentally do good things for the planet.