June 10, 2008 | Filed under: Announcements, by Nick | No Comments »

Initially released as an ADX-sponsored campaign, we have decided to transition Cleaner Commerce into an industry-wide initiative. Individual companies like ADX enable several thousand customers to accomplish environmental savings on the order of millions of sheets of paper each year. The combination of all the related e-commerce players out there helps hundreds of thousands of businesses save billions and billions of sheets of paper each month. The Cleaner Commerce initiative is all about driving positive environmental change in business, and we will be most successful as an industry-wide initiative.

What that means right now is that we are going to focus our efforts on reaching out to potential sponsors who want to participate, or take a leadership role, in Cleaner Commerce. The goal is to develop a core group of twenty supporting organizations by August 2008.

What is in it for sponsors?

Consumers and businesses are expressing ever greater concern about the environment, and with rising resource prices, they are now desperate to find more efficient ways to do business. As it turns out, E-Commerce service providers offer a way for their customers to reduce their environmental impacts (less paper required to do business) and to improve operational efficiency (less time/money spent on paper-work). Sponsors of Cleaner Commerce become environmental leaders as they support an initiative that pushes for greater adoption of environmentally friendly and efficient business practices.

Win-Win

As an industry-wide initiative, Cleaner Commerce will work day and night to build awareness of the environmental impacts of paper-based business processes, and the benefits of transitioning to E-Commerce. Emphasizing and drawing attention to the environmental savings that result from less paper usage, Cleaner Commerce will help grow the entire E-Commerce industry and especially its supporters.

As the E-Commerce industry grows, the environmental impacts of thousands of businesses decrease as they switch to ever more efficient ways of doing business. It is good for business and the environment.

Talk to us

We welcome your feedback, and if you are a company interested in becoming a sponsor of Cleaner Commerce, please contact us.

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.

April 23, 2008 | Filed under: Going Clean by Nick | No Comments »

Our Earth Day launch of the Cleaner Commerce campaign was a big success and we enjoyed the feedback people sent in! We still have a bunch of things in the works like enhancing the impact calculator and adding features to the blog. The Cleaner Commerce you see today is just the beginning of what will become a much larger campaign with all sorts of informative content and useful tools to help companies become more efficient.

Earth Day 2008 has come and gone, but the value of running a business efficiently remains. Earth Day is a great day to make an extra effort to “go green,” but the benefits of using resources responsibly do not stop there.

On the business side of the equation, running your operations more efficiently saves money and gives employees more time to focus on value-adding projects. It can be a challenge to overcome inertia and actually get efficient solutions implemented, but it is well worth it once you do.

The environmental benefits of efficiency are very clear – you do more with fewer resources and produce less pollution. Enough said!

It is also no secret that taking steps to be more efficient is great for corporate image – people like the good guys better!

Join us over the next several weeks as we discuss how companies can take steps to become more efficient, and ultimately become better businesses.

April 22, 2008 | Filed under: Blog by Nick | No Comments »

Hello, my name is Nick Harris and I am the Environmental Specialist at Advanced Data Exchange (ADX) - an E-Commerce service provider for thousands of companies across dozens of industries. I am here to announce the Earth Day 2008 launch of the Cleaner Commerce campaign!

Sponsored by ADX, the campaign’s goal is to reduce the environmental impacts of commerce, starting with paper. ADX offers services that help companies go paper-free, so sponsoring Cleaner Commerce is a “win-win” for our company: good for business and good for the environment.

I am passionate about connecting businesses with efficient solutions, and a major step most can make today is to use less paper! Sure, there are myriad other steps that can be taken too, but paper reduction is a simple step in the right direction that will help guide companies down a more efficient path. I think Earth Day is a great time to think about how we can use our resources more wisely and reduce the environmental impacts of our business practices.

Today marks the beginning of a journey that will ultimately bring together many businesses, environmental organizations, and individuals to develop ways to work towards a cleaner future. Please check back often and keep in touch - I look forward to working on a noble and practical vision with you all!

-Nick Harris

P.S. Check out some of the cool features on our website:
- Our home page with the “To think, to create” introduction video.
- Our impact calculator where you can estimate how much paper you business uses.
- Our “Retire the Fax” video series where you can see what these loyal workers are doing now that technology has allowed them to retire.

March 8, 2008 | Filed under: Blog by admin | No Comments »

Will have several entries ready by launch of website