Businesses, Do Your Part To Conserve Energy - Start Going Green

By Melanie Gordon

It is one thing for individuals to go green in their homes, but what if every business enterprise turned into a green business? There is so much waste that happens in the workplace that just a small amount of effort would create great savings in energy and money. Preventing waste and keeping things clean seem to belong to a bygone era. Way back, everyone realized the truth of the saying "waste not, want not."

Going green need not be distressful or costly for business, given the many simple ways it can be carried out - but the environmental rewards would be great. Office equipment in general, but especially the office printer, are items which provide opportunities for change. If offices utilized less paper, fewer trees would need to be cut. Paper utilization could be cut in half merely by using both sides of the paper. Trees do a task which is valuable to the environment, which is to remove carbon dioxide from the environment during photosynthesis. Reducing the amount of paper they use is simply one of the ways in which offices can go green.

Surely business travel could be cut back, given how the internet now links business enterprises worldwide. Envision how much energy and money could be saved by doing away with business conferences in distant places. The great amount of business travel that occurs, frequently using fuel guzzlers and carbon spewers such as jets and large autos, places great demands on our planet. Let people carry out their conferences via live real-time video, which is much more affordable than travel by jet. Now through the power of the internet, lotso f jobs that are done in the office could be done at home, saving car travel, and office expenses. This can make a huge difference, although not every job can be done in this manner.

The use of email instead of paper-based communications is a simple way for a business enterprise to go green. The savings in paper resulting from bills being paid over the Internet would be great. It will be good for the planet if more tasks get done using electronics and not paper. The replacement of personal computers and monitors with laptops offers offices with another means for not wasting energy. The most energy a laptop computer consumes is 50 watts, whereas around 270 watts is utilized by a computer and a monitor. Laptops can be set to switch to sleep mode, saving a further amount of energy, after they have been inactive for some time, usually 15 minutes.

Despite what's frequently inferred from their name, screensavers use more energy than normal. The biggest saving of energy and money a commercial enterprise could generate, though, would come from switching off each and every desktop computer or laptop whenever they were not in use. Sufficient energy to meet the power demands of the city of Chicago for an entire year would be saved by all businesses doing this.

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