I keep reading all this green stuff that everyone’s writing and I am full of admiration for those that would repair our planet. Then I decided to take the green matter one step further and live green. I made the announcement in the kitchen where my wife and her 2 assistants, my daughters, were preparing dinner. I ended my little speech by saying to my wife, “you are the manager of our Green Project. You decide what we do.” She nodded in silent acceptance. Oh boy… Did I hear shrieks of laughter after I left the kitchen?

Dinner

Dinner turned out to be salads, fresh fruit and 2 pieces of whole-wheat bread. The bread was quickly withdrawn when daughter number 2 reminded us that bread is baked in an electric oven and using electricity is a green no-no. I was about to suggest that we could get around the electrical problem by taking a Cash Advance and buying bread which is a dietary necessity, but then I realized that the cooking factor would still be there. We definitely saved money on the dinner.

Shower

I hopped into the shower before going to bed to find the water icy cold. “I turned the boiler off. Heating water with electricity is a green no-no. I suggest you build one of those solar water heating panels tomorrow.”

“But I arranged to go fishing with the boys…”

“Your choice. I myself find the cold showers invigorating. Plus we’re saving money on electricity and saving the planet.” I saved more money on water. I was out of that shower in a flash.

Bed

“Reading lamps are out. Electricity again. But we don’t have to give up reading in bed, we’ll use candles. I managed about 2 pages of the thousand page monster book I was trying to finish. “Can’t we just…?” I asked. I got a silent headshake. Money saved on my candle.

Breakfast

Breakfast was cereal and cold milk and an awful concoction of hand-stirred cold coffee. I was presented with a small scrap of paper which simply read, “Savings to date $35.78.” I sprinted for the garage so I could get away from this self-inflicted madness and get to the office and environmental sanity as quickly as possible.

The car

The garage was locked with the largest padlock I have ever seen. Yep, my car is not green. It’s not even hybrid, just an old-fashioned fossil fuel guzzling super-comfortable Chev. I love it! I grabbed one of the girl’s old bikes from the tool shed, pumped up the tires and made for the station. I have to admit that I enjoyed the bike ride but hated inhaling everyone else’s exhaust fumes. I also hated the feeling that I was a moving target for every car on the road. I broke the green rules by riding on the electric powered train and enjoyed it. I may get back to bike riding in the countryside after this green experiment is over.

The office

The office brews great hot coffee, has an electric water cooler and as a senior draftsman I have an electric pencil sharpener.

The day

All in all I had a good “green” day. We saved money and if we keep this up and iron out some of the bumps, we can live green lives. Like everything else it will take some work.

I work in an almost paperless office. Everything is saved on the computers and at the end of every day the secretary walks from one computer to the next backing up the whole thing. I have never asked her where she keeps the backup device, whatever it is. But watching this obsessive backing up got me thinking about my own computer at home. I applied for a Personal Loan and went to the local computer shop and bought myself a back-up device which I now use about once month.

The old days

Remember how things used to be in the office? I started working when I left school at the age of 18. It was a small engineering office and the suite of offices was wall-to-wall paper. At 5 every evening, at the end of the day’s work, everyone had to arrange all the paper on their desks in neat piles and carry it to a fire-proof strong room, which had a door like Fort Knox, where it would be locked up overnight. Who exactly is being obsessive! No one ever talked about saving paper and in fact, when I think back, we wasted a lot of paper on meaningless tasks. But that’s how the world was back then.

Paperless

According to Melinda Stoker, director of marketing for Xerox Corporation’s DocuShare business unit, decreasing paper usage or going “paper light” is a strategy that reaps several positive results. “If the U.S. cut its office paper use by roughly 10%, or 540,000 tons, greenhouse gas emissions would fall by 1.6 million tons. That would be the same as taking 280,000 cars off the road for a year.” Nowadays “going green” is a trendy option for companies and organizations are finding real value in reducing their carbon footprint, with benefits that include significant cost savings and increased worker productivity.

Home printing

Years ago I rushed out and bought a color printer. I was frantically busy with new projects and I didn’t notice that I was ordering color ink refills every week. The cost of these got lost in the cost of everything else and when you’re making money, who cares? When the rush was over I noticed what was going on. I bought a black and white laser printer and things returned to normal. After a couple of months I found that I was hardly printing at all and the only user was my wife. That has stopped too and these days we rarely print. Each time we do, I pray that the printer hasn’t forgotten its role in life.

Around the U.S.

Melinda Stoker says that we should all take a look around the office and evaluate how workers use paper documents. She has provided some statistics related to paper usage in the U.S.:

• The average office worker prints 10,000 pages per year and wastes 1,410 pages.
• The average cost of a wasted page is six cents.
• A company with 500 employees spends $42,000 on wasted print-outs a year.
• Only 49% of office workers say they recycle at work.
• Every ton of recycled paper saves three cubic meters of landfill space.
• It takes 10 times more energy to manufacture a piece of paper than to create another print or copy.
• Stoker recommends that companies deploy a “paper light” document management strategy.

Make Money by Going Green

Recycling and payday loans can make your life and your wallet greener. Recently, there has been a huge push to live greener, and there has been a huge need to save money. You probably didn’t know that the two lifestyles go hand in hand, but they do. Living green is a lot easier than you might expect. There are simple steps you can take to make your life green. One of the easiest green lifestyle habits you can adopt is recycling. When you recycle you can save and even make money while simultaneously helping the environment.

Recycling

Recycling is very simple. If you haven’t already, all you have to do is sign up with your local waste disposal company and they can furnish you with a recycling bin. From there, you just separate out the items from your family’s trash that you can recycle: plastic bottles and bags, cartons, glass jars and bottles, cardboard, newspaper, and aluminum cans. If you want to make a little money, you can keep all your aluminum cans in a separate container. When you have a few bags full of aluminum cans, you can take them to your local recycling center, where they will pay you for turning in the cans. Another simple and low cost way to recycle is bringing reusable shopping bags with you when you shop.

Cell Phone Recycling

One thing you should definitely consider recycling is your old cell phone. Maybe you have more than one? Americans usually replace their cell phone once a year, which means almost 100 million cell phones either get tossed in a junk drawer or the trash every year! So dig out those old cell phones and check out Flipswap. Trade in values for cell phones range from $4-$100. You can clean out your junk drawer, recycle your cell phone, and make a little extra cash all at the same time.

Holiday Recycling

You can even incorporate recycling into your holiday season. Gift wrap and gift boxes are some of the most wasteful things of the holiday season. If you think about it, most people don’t really care what the gift is wrapped in anyway; they just want what’s inside. So instead of purchasing brand new gift wrap and boxes this holiday season, try to find items around your house that can serve as wrapping materials. Extra ribbon, scrap fabric, bows, magazines, newspapers and bags are all great ideas for homemade gift wrap. If your holiday tradition includes a Christmas tree, you can recycle your Christmas tree when the season is over. Call your local recycling facility to learn more about Christmas tree recycling.

Green for Your Wallet – Recycling & Payday Loans

As you’ve just learned, there are simple and low cost recycling habits you can take up that will actually help you make money. Not only are your green habits helping the world environment, they’re adding the good kind of green to your wallet—cold, hard cash. Unfortunately, adding a little extra cash from recycling isn’t going to pay your bills. The economy is still struggling, so it is understandable if making rent or paying bills is tough this holiday season. If you need a little extra green in your budget, you can apply for payday loans to help cover the costs.