Law Department Management Blog
In three previous posts I listed a total of 27 energy-saving ideas (See my post of April 27, 2008: ten tips; Oct. 12, 2008: nine ideas; Nov. 9, 2008: three ideas; March 11, 2009: four more steps toward environmental preservation; and May 29, 2009: power strips and solar battery chargers.). To that assemblage, I commend six more from Law Practice, Vol. 35, July/Aug. 2009 at 9 (marked with “LP”). You can learn more about these steps at the website. www.abanet.org/environ/climatechallenge/home.shtml
- Find out and understand your “carbon footprint”
- Collect and recycle used batteries
- Remove your name from mailing lists that send out paper catalogs
- Interview candidates and law firms by video conference
- Power down computers and printers
- Put printers, fax machines and scanners on a 45-minute power save
- Plug your computer equipment into a power strip – and turn the strip off at the end of every day
- Rely on power strips which turn off peripheral devices when the strip senses that a computer is turned off
- Install energy efficient light bulbs
- Put in motion detectors that turn off lights
- Install lower-energy flat panel monitors
- Distribute reports, communications, and newsletters electronically and design them with an eye toward them efficient printing
- Use the “draft” setting when printing
- Print pages double sided
- Stop spewing out a cover sheet before each print job
- Install software that omits the last page of printouts from the web, the page that only shows a line or two from the bottom of the website
- Replace plastic cups with washable mugs
- Bring mugs or reusable cups to work
- Copy on both sides of paper.
- Place recycling containers next to printers
- Use recycled paper for copying
- Encourage refillable water bottles
- Provide trash containers that have round holes for cans and bottles to recycle
- Recycle toner cartridges
- Discard computer equipment responsibly or redistribute it to those who can use it
- Encourage car-pooling
- Use solar battery chargers (LP)
- Ditch plastic silverware and use the regular, washable kind (LP)
- Filter water instead of providing bottled water (LP)
- Use Energy Star electronic equipment, such as fans or heaters (LP)
- Replace paper faxes with a system that converts incoming faxes to PDF files for email distribution (LP)
- Adopt the TransitChek program for commuters (LP)