Ways to Run an Environmentally Friendly Office

Article From www.thenewbusinessblog.com by Brian Carr

Whether you run an entire office or are just the king of your cubicle, there are some pretty easy things that you can do to help make your work space a more environmentally place.
Since it looks like being green is here to stay, it’s probably about time that you jumped on the bandwagon and took advantage of some simple ways to help reduce your office’s carbon footprint:

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  Turn off your computer when you leave for the day. Unless you’re planning on coming back in the middle of the night and you absolutely have to have your computer already up and running, go ahead and power down for the night.
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  Turn off the lights in common areas once everyone leaves. There’s no point in leaving the light on in the copy room if it’s going to sit unused for 13 or 14 hours each night. Same goes for every other common area in your office.
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  Get some small indoor plants. If you’re lucky enough to have an office with a window, most any plant should do ok. However, if you don’t have a window, make sure you do a little bit of research and check out which plants can survive in your office without lots of direct sunlight.
  


• Use Energy Star certified equipment. From your monitor, to your copier to the vending machines in the lunchroom, make sure that all of the equipment you use in the office is Energy Star certified.

• Start a recycling program. Get some plastic, glass and aluminum bins for the lunch room, and put recycling boxes in printing rooms. It’s pretty easy to do and it might even show that you have some initiative. That being said, you’re going to want to make sure that you don’t recycle company sensitive information; you’ll definitely want to shred that instead.
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  Don’t print if you don’t have to. The biggest use of trees is for paper, so theoretically, if we reduce the amount of paper we use, we’ll reduce the amount of trees that get cut down. And if you have to use a ton of paper, go the green route and buy recycled office paper.
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  Bring in a coffee mug. Instead of getting a new styrofoam or disposable cup each day, bring in a regular coffee mug from home and just rinse it out at the end of each day. This is a great and simple way to reduce needless trash.

While this certainly isn’t the be all, end all of ways you can make your office more environmentally friendly, this list is a pretty good place to start. And the best part is, doing many of these things won’t really put you out or force you to change too many habits.

I know it sounds pretty cliche, but if each of us would do just a couple of small things to reduce our impact, we could probably do a lot to help stave off the global environmental crisis.

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Progress Towards the Paperless Office

Article From www.greentechmedia.com by Oso Oseguera

The paperless office is the classic example of something that hasn't yet occurred despite being just around the corner for decades. But by combining it with search capabilities, PaperlessUSA says it is making progress toward this ever-elusive goal.

"My focus was not on building a software application, but on giving users a path to find information to make the task easier and quicker, while creating a profitable business," says Paul Stansen, CEO of PaperlessUSA (PUSA). While an estimated 9 trillion pages a year are confined to computer screens, the number of printed pages stands at around 2.8 trillion worldwide -- and believe it or not, that number is growing. Behavioral research conducted for the printer manufacturer Xerox found that office workers discard 45% of everything they print on most days, a waste stream that is equal to more than a trillion pieces of paper every year. The most popular 'one-time use' examples are daily assignments, drafts and emails. Others include cover sheets, e-tickets for flights, and directions printed in lieu of maps.

The printing company estimates that 351 items contribute to an organization's total printing costs. Despite efforts to go paperless, the amount of information printed is doubling every 3.5 years. An average office generates two pounds of waste paper daily. And the average American corporation or government organization has roughly one output device (printer, copier, scanner, fax) for every 2.5 employees. Also, printers consume a lot of electrical power, including phantom power when devices are in standby mode. An organization that reduces two-thirds of its supply of output devices could use up to 50% less power.

In 1999, as a real-estate attorney in a paper-intensive profession, Stansen decided not to waste vast amounts of paper by printing out documents. Instead, he made a concerted effort to use less paper and minimize his interaction with printed documents. Not only that, Stansen wanted a software solution that would let him retrieve precise data instantly. He searched the commercial market but no solution he found was specific to his kind of work. What's more, the few solutions he did find were hard to adapt to his needs and were complex to manage. So Stansen decided to write the application himself.

"I did it myself. Computer people think like computer people. What I need is a system that is basically a useful application, whether working with an accountant, a CEO, a businessman, a CTO, a government agency or a law firm. The reality is the same: an organization is an organization," he asserts.

Without knowing anything about computer programming, Stansen just sat down at a PC and began designing his application. "I tried to keep it simple. It took me about three to five months because it is a combination of what you want and how to organize and put it in a user-friendly environment on the Internet," Stansen explains. Today, more than a decade later, he is still upgrading the platform, based mainly on the PDF document format.
PUSA implements proprietary methodologies to image and integrate client data in one browser format. Documents co-exist with photographs, video and audio files, so that users can source all relevant information quickly and easily.

More powerful use of digital data is enabled because his system can search images for target text-words and phrases. PUSA transforms scanned documents that can be searched without loss of original-quality visual integrity.

"We can maximize a reader's ability to find a needle in a haystack when faced with thousands of pages, or whenever specific information is needed quickly. Text can be highlighted, searched, even extracted from the image and pasted into preferred word-processing software for new uses. Imagine the power of searching multiple documents containing thousands of pages with the same search parameters; imagine, too, audible read-back functionality," Stantsen notes.
PUSA's customers can receive a DVD or can look for the information on the company's website. In addition, PUSA implements security measures to assure that readership and data use is controlled. PaperlessUSA can limit access to all Adobe PDF files by assigning passwords and restricting features such as printing and editing.

James Daloisio, an attorney in the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office (Major Fraud Division, Real Estate Fraud Section) said the search function has saved "untold hours of searching for a document with a particular name, address or phone number on it."

Southern California Edison, meanwhile, employs the program on Rule 20A construction bidding projects. Before PaperlessUSA, each project consisted of stacks and stacks of documents and photos that were reproduced up to twenty times through distribution to qualified subcontractor bidders.

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Professional Way To Manage Documents

To maintain documents in hard format is very tough task. It is very tiresome and time-consuming task. It also requires huge space to store or preserve. To maintain hard format document, company have to spend money on management and maintenance. After spending huge amount of money, there may be misplaced document which cost the company a lot.
Most of the time companies are loosing big opportunity because of unmanaged document and lack of information. By having document scanning, companies can grab big opportunity very easily. Document scanning is a process of converting hard format into digital format. Documents are scanned into digital format and preserved into digital devices or storage holder.

Let’s check out how document scanning helpful to manage document:
Records: To track the record of document access, you must require a person to mange the list which includes all the information such as who access, which document, when accessed, etc. It is very hard to find particular information, if there is large amount of document transactions going on. By having document scanning, one can easily track record of document access.

Access: In company, there are various documents which are very confidential and only accessed by higher authority. If the hard copy is available in the premise, one can access by hook or cook. If it is scanned and available digitally, higher authority can give security for such important information. One can easily find who access the document at what time.

Search: If there is urgent requirement of any document, it is very difficult to search hard copy. You can easily search digital document within few clicks.

Space: Hard copy requires more space for storage. One must save space to decrease the capital cost. If you can manage in less space, your capital cost goes down deeply. This way you can save huge money too. It is possible through digital format of document. It requires very little space for storage compared to hard copy.

Time: One can easily save time of document retrieval by using digital document. Digital documents save time of searching that way you can definitely see the improved productivity.
So, document scanning helps you out to manage your document professionally and cost effectively.

Information Courtesy of www.articlesbase.com

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