Ditch common paper trails – two common paper trails include bills and notes. You can easily leave these trails behind in 2009. Get some whiteboards, leave them by phones, hang one on the fridge, and place little ones out where you normally take and leave notes for people. You can thus skip pads of paper and memos. As for bills, sign up for paperless billing whenever possible. There’s no point to paper bills nowadays and paying bills online saves you a check as well.

Green your take out – the best way to green take out meals is to eat less of them. However, if you still grab food on the go once in a while make sure you skip the extra napkins, silverware, and other extras you already have at home. This is a simple step to remember for the year.

Hang a water saving note - if you haven’t been shutting off the tap while you brush or shave you’re wasting a ton of water; up to 3 gallons a minute. Hang a simple note in the bathroom reminding people to simply turn the tap off while not actually using the water. Think about it, if you brush your teeth for two minutes, three times a day, you’re saving almost 18 gallons of water per day while brushing your teeth alone.

Donate a cell phone or two – each year about 65,000 tons of waste are created when people toss their cell phones away. Cell phones can contain icky stuff like lead and mercury and although small add up to a lot of toxic trash in our landfills. It’s also totally unnecessary to toss a cell phone. There are plenty of cell phone donation sites and recycling centers all over and even available via mail.

[image via stock.xchng]

Post from: Blisstree

Simple green steps for the new year

But, technology changes, something shiny and new catches your eye, and, before you know it, you have quite the collection of unused cell phones in a desk drawer, and, you make yourself feel better about it by saying someone might “need them someday”.

Hoard no more! Earth 2 Tech lists Five Easy Ways to Recycle Your Cell Phone.

Phones can be sold on eBay, given to fund raising groups, and, more. In my city, the police department collects used cell phones, and, has a program to give them to domestic violence victims.

There’s also companies such as Funding Factory that help schools raise money by recycling phones and printer cartridges, and, nothing could be easier than taking them to a drop box at a school.

(via Web Worker Daily)

Post from: Blisstree

Cell phone recycling