Earth Day 2011 will be organized around A Billion Acts of Green®: Personal, organizational and corporate pledges to live and act sustainably.
Part of the corporate culture at The National Society of Collegiate Scholars is working sustainably. We have more than a few people in the office passionately committed to green living which makes for some great conversations as well as more driving in the green direction at every turn.
We challenge each other to use less, turn off lights, only print emails when absolutely necessary and even have brought-from-home plants in the office. We have a motion detector connected to the lights in the kitchen, have recycling bins at each desk and make paper cups available only to guests. If you want water or coffee, you bring your own mug!
At our last TEAM meeting we went over the ways in which we are excelling and where we’re falling short with regards to sustainability and keeping the office green.
At the end of this discussion, we came to the conclusion that our number one problem is still paper. We use too much of it. We use way too much of it. It makes us cringe to see the actual numbers on how much paper we’re going through.
In keeping with the Earth Day theme to pledge an act of green, this pledge was circulated (via email through our internal server so no one printed it) and signed by all members of the organization from the CEO down.
“I, Your Name Here, pledge to always check the number of copies I am printing, to only print one page of a document instead of the whole thing if edits are needed, to always use the front and back printing option, to use discarded paper as scratch paper, to never needlessly print an email, to check and double check for any grammar and spelling errors before printing and to always recycle!
Make your pledge count! Record it for the A Billion Acts of Green campaign here: http://act.earthday.org/act/1299701332/use-less-paper.”
Many people went on to take more pledges ranging from eating local food to washing all laundry in cold water.
All are found on the Billion Acts of Green page here: http://act.earthday.org.
I’m hopeful that this is a step in the right direction. If we can correct this problem, we will make a greater impact on the world around us. I’m confident that at the next TEAM meeting, the paper problem will be solved.