While our office is somewhat obsessed with reducing waste at every level, paper expenses and water delivery service are two points of consumption easily reduced by any organization.
Using single space formatting and printing on both sides of the paper have been the standing orders of many businesses for years. A further improvement on this practice is to develop a paper harvesting and reuse system. In our office every piece of paper with a blank side is placed into a printer drawer marked "recycling." This paper is perfect when printing for internal circulation, draft review, or filing. Printing for files can be made even more efficient by printing four pages on one page. While the text might be annoyingly small the filed documents are not routinely reviewed and are often never seen again.
Delivering five gallon bottles of water to an office is exceptionally wasteful. Much of the water is merely filtered municipal tap water branded under the illusion of "purity" with the aide of a label invariably featuring a mountain. This "natural" water is then bottled in plastic and shipped using diesel trucks. This logic sequence is the equivalent of deciding to supply power to a home with delivered batteries rather then tap the existing grid.
The perfect replacement to this antiquated system is a filtered water dispenser attached directly to the existing water lines. Pure Water Technology of San Diego, http://www.purewatertechsandiego.com/, offers a phenomenal system that we recently installed in our office. The quality of the water is better than any bottled water available and we never have to deal with bottles again. This system is also less expensive than conventional water delivery systems, especially for organizations spending over $70.00 per month on bottled water.
These two changes are environmentally responsible and can save a great deal of money. Please feel free to stop by our office for a water taste test or watch us attempt to read our micro-text .
