May 20, 2008 | Filed under: Environmental Initiatives by admin | 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.