So the call is out for individuals to stick with green ways at home, but imagine if all commercial enterprises listened to a similar call. With all of the waste in the workforce, an astounding amount of money and energy can be saved with just a little initiative. There appears to be so little care for keeping things clean these days, or for preventing waste. Earlier generations, having grown up in lean times, recognized the wisdom of being thrifty.

There are simple tips that could allow business enterprises to go green, which would be invaluable. Office equipment generally, but especially the office printer, are business items which provide opportunities for change. If offices utilized less paper, fewer trees would need to be cut down. Just using both sides can cut the amount of paper used by half. Trees do a task which is valuable to the environment, which is to take out carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis. Reducing the amount of paper they use is only one of the ways in which offices can become eco-friendly.

Surely business travel could be decreased, given how the internet nowadays ties business organizations worldwide. Envision how much energy and money could be saved by doing away with business conferences in distant places. The great amount of business travel that goes on, often using fuel guzzlers and carbon spewers such as jets and large cars, places great demands on our planet. Video conferencing could be done more cheaply compared to jet travel. The internet makes it possible as well to save on travel and office expenses by letting people do a number of jobs at home. While not everyone can do their jobs this fashion, the overall scope for beneficial change is great.

A quick way for the workplace to become eco-friendly and save a lot of paper is to switch to email. The savings in paper due to bills being paid online will be tremendous. It will be great for the planet if more tasks are carried out using electronics and not paper. A big way for the office to conserve a lot of energy is to stop using stand-alone computers and monitors, and switch to laptops instead. A computer plus monitor consume more or less 270 watts of energy, whereas a laptop uses 50 watts, maximum. A huge energy saver for laptop computers is when they have not been used for 15 minutes, they switch to sleep mode.

For those who think they are saving energy with screensavers, the opposite is true, since they use more energy. Nevertheless, if businesses switched off all laptops and desktop computers during periods of non-use, that would be the best way for them to go green, and they would save a huge amount of money. If all business enterprises were to do this, adequate energy would be saved to power the city of Chicago for an entire year.