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I have spent the last year attending meetings and roundtables on subjects such as “going green” and “sustainability” and have been deluged with wonderful ideas, suggestions, and products that can, in fact, help me be a better steward of the world I move it. 

Unfortunately, most of them are either inapplicable in my environment or cost more money that I make to implement – or, in short, are great ideas with no practical use for me;  I imagine that I am not the only small business person who feels that way.

At the same time, I have been undergoing a parallel effort to determine what, if any changes we can make at UniTech to become more “green” – I figure if you can’t do the big stuff, maybe a lot of little stuff will make a difference….

What I have learned that may or may not be true in other worlds, but could be useful:

1. We use a ton of cardboard and nobody wants it. 
2. We have the potential to waste/discard a lot of telephone/computer cabling that can be recycled.
3. Refilling ink cartridges does not destroy printers, and in fact most companies that refill them are useful sources of printer information and warranty their product against repairs.
4. It makes me smile to pay a little bit more for recycled paper products – and they are in fact very little more.
5. Driving slower not only improves gas usage, it makes you calmer at the end of the day.
6. People don’t care if you send them electronic invoices, as long as you clear it with them first.
7. Energy efficient light bulbs don’t put out nearly as much light, but if you mix and match you can come up with a workable solution.
8. Washing coffee cups and water glasses doesn’t take that much time.

While the changes we are making aren’t sexy, and exciting, and certainly won’t make a difference on any global scale, they have reduced our trash pickup by at least 75% - and make us feel like we’re trying.  The things I have learned that made a difference in our office and may make a difference in yours:Recycling and separating has to be easy, or people won’t do it.  And the plastic grocery bags are the worst.  We finally bought these little plastic wall holders from Ikea for a couple of dollars each; they aren’t ugly and you just stuff the bags in them; when the container is full, throw all the bags in one and throw it in your car and take it to the store with you the next time.  Most grocery stores and WalMart will take back plastic bags.People will use coffee cups and glasses if they are obviously, sparkly, no doubt-about-it clean; if you use water bottles again make sure there is a container nearby to dispose of them in.  The same goes for soda cans.  Companies make clever little boxes for offices just for this purpose, or just label small trash cans.Paper is the devil.  It’s everywhere!!  I actually print on both sides of most of it, and recycle all of it.  A small irritation I discovered – shredded paper is not considered recyclable by the City of Phoenix, so we actually shred it, bag it in small amounts in the also-irritating grocery bags, and use it for packing when we ship equipment in for repair or to our customers. The biggest impact we made in our sustainability effort deals with metal and cardboard.  As a telecom company, we do two things:  We pull a lot of telephone/network cabling, and we install and de-install a lot of hardware.  This results in our biggest waste issue:  cardboard, cable ends, and unusable or old equipment.   Historically, the practice in our industry (or any construction-related industry) is to just throw all this excess in the on-site dumpsters.  About a year ago, we decided to stop doing that and seeing if there was a more sensible way to reuse or reclaim some of this material, and recycle any we could of the remainder.  Almost overnight, our shop garage started looking like a construction dumpster… so new rules had to be put into place.Whenever possible, we give away old phones and ends of cable boxes, but our supply always exceeds the demand.  The biggest problem is the boxes of cable that are too short to be used for anything; each box made of cardboard, has anywhere from 10 to 50 feet of cable inside, and has either a plastic or metal spool that the cable is wrapped around.  We have to remove the cable, remove the spool, and flatten the cardboard; things we never really even thought about before.  About 6 months ago, we got a big wooden box and started throwing all the bits and pieces of cable in it just to see how much we accumulate.  The old equipment just lies around until someone claims it, and the cardboard was requiring a trip to the city dump about every month just to get rid of it. The point of this long-winded description?  It all came together when we kept hearing  stories about copper being stolen for its value.  Which resulted in us calling a local recycling company, Arizona Environmental Recycling, who sent a representative out to visit with us and discuss their recycling business.  We set up an account with them, and now whenever our copper bin is full, we send a truck to their yard and not only do we get paid for the copper, they also take our cardboard, and any old phone equipment that we will never be able to give away.  They don’t pay money for anything but the copper, which wasn’t the point anyway - - we are just trying to somewhat-easily not add to the local landfills.  The check for the copper covers the cost and time of all the material breakdown and getting the delivery made, so we make a difference without spending a lot of money to do so.I know this has very little to do with phone systems and technology, but its just one story of how you can make a difference more than you think you can.  Maybe next year we’ll invent something really sexy – like solar VoIP services carried over wind-driven phone services….