There are good reasons to work toward reduced impacts. We know most of the environment-saving actions we read about will also save us money. Clients express appreciation when suppliers do their bit towards a sustainable future.

Our pro bono effort to help with Gulf oil cleanup (www.gulfsaversolutions.com) was a type of singular environmental action. That’s worthy, but what counts largest are the routine actions.

Here are some routine efforts that we make at GORGES.  If you would like to know about our experience with any of these, please contact me or Don.

Communicate electronically:  We send invoices electronically unless we are explicitly asked to send by postal mail.  This significantly reduces paper use, and we have found as a bonus that clients often pay more quickly with this method.

We send newsletters by email. It’s rare that anyone we are talking with declines to receive the newsletter. We use a service to send it and monitor the sending, and almost one-half of our recipients open the newsletter.  If given a choice, we ask businesses that send print newsletters to us by postal mail, or other recurring correspondence to switch us to email. If they are not setup to do that, we offer to help with the advances.

Reduce paper usage:  Over the holidays some of my family visited and we toured the GORGES offices.  My sister marveled at how little printed paper there was in everyone’s work area.  It’s true – we have set up collaborative file repositories and work almost exclusively electronically.  There are days when our group of seventeen prints nothing.

Turn off appliances:  This is obvious, but it does work.  Even devices on standby mode consume some power.  We supply power strips to each workstation area and encourage staff to turn off the entire strip at the end of the day.  Turning monitors off is common enough; turning the whole computer off helps even further.

When we switched offices last summer I changed our phone extensions from using many individual power adapters to a single power-over-ethernet switch device in our server closet.  The energy savings may be marginal, but the added benefit of reduced wires and freeing up a workstation power outlet was nice.

The biggest savings come from deactivating devices entirely.  By upgrading some servers at our co-location facility, we have decommissioned five servers in favor of two new ones.  An added benefit is reducing number of our uninterruptible power supply units, which require expensive lead-acid batteries that only last 2-3 years.

Reused & recycled items:  We built out our office with re-purposed furniture, saving thousands of dollars.  There may be a scratch or three on the new desks, but it sure beats the fold-up tables we had during our early startup years.  And old items and equipment are not always sent directly to the trash – we are regular contributors to the Finger Lakes ReUse Center.  Of course we also do the standard office paper, plastic, and metal recycling.

Plants:  We have many indoor plants. They are great to look at and help to clean the air, particularly in rooms with minimal air movement or no windows. Employing electrical devices to do the same is costly, annoying, and boring.

We have an active thermostat control program. We are after all a bunch of techies, so we can handle programming the devices!  We can all handle an extra degree without being uncomfortable, and this reduces our power consumption.

Location:  We love working downtown, and have remained here despite seeing other tech companies move to the office parks and ‘burbs.  Several staff (including myself) walk to work, and others bicycle or take public transportation.  We have one client who provides bus fares to all employees for going to and from the office (and even to travel to meetings).

In summary, I’m sure you can think of other ways to reduce your power or materials consumption in your own office as well; it all counts.  Let us help if our experience or technical skills can contribute to reducing consumption.