Adopt a weekly eco-innovation

As I've said before, going green is a journey up Mount Sustainability -- not something easily accomplished with a few tweaks.

Whether you are a company, or just an individual, you must continually innovate to maximize your green-ness. The best way to do this is by focusing on a single weekly innovation. Think about everything you do as you do your workaday, and isolate areas where you can reduce your impact on the planet.

This week's innovation is to reduce the printing that I create via my documents. Frequently, we author presentations (PowerPoint or PDF) that, if printed by the recipient, could create a massive print job. Each page we use makes a difference, so I'm beginning to review my outgoing documents to make sure that I've reduced the page count -- making each page beg for its life. If the document is 3 pages, and the third page is just one paragraph, I reformat the document to expand margins or reduce the footer/header to turn it into 2 pages. Same goes with power points. I send them out in handout format, fitting 2 to 4 on a page if my recipients hit the print button without thinking.

Finally, I've started to use GreenPDF to add a little tag to my PDFs, encouring my recipients not to print out the document unless they need too.

If the automakers can green up by reducing how much gas they force their customers to use, I can think the same way as an information worker.

While I'm pretty excited about this new idea, it is only one of 50 that I need to come up with this year. I'll give myself two weeks off this year for good behavior.

Have you had an eco-innovation this week that you'd like to share? Post it in comments, and maybe, one of this blog's readers will adopt it as their weekly eco-breakthrough.

Comments

[todddoubleu]

I'm also intrigued by programs like Microsoft OneNote or Evernote (evernote.com) that enable you to capture items from the web, sort them electronically, and store them for future reference. It's a much different approach than the one taken with printed documents, files and filing cabinets. Paul Young's lyrics may sum things up best: "Everything Must Change."

[DeAnna Cochran]

As a "green artist" (my medium is silver that is reclaimed from film negatives and x-rays) I really wanted to start to make larger impacts this year. My husband and I are both business owners. This year we took intiative to call the city and have them deliver more recycle bins. With a conscious effort placed on "what" we throw away now we have managed to only fill the trash bin once every two weeks 9before it overflowed every week) and we now recycle two bins instead. All it took was a little effort to separate the items for recycle.

p.s. - Many years ago (in my previous corporate life) I had the pleasure of hearing you speak live. You were so motivating. Keep doing great things!