PlanMyGreen.com

Author: Brandi Cummings

Many of us want to be responsible citizens of the Earth. We think about the effects our lifestyles have on the environment. We are concerned about global warming. We want to ensure our children’s future on this planet is one that still has clean air to breathe, an abundance of trees and wildlife, and clean water to drink. However, many of us also think that the sacrifices might be too great to “go green” in our own office. Good news. It’s not as difficult as you think.

There are 3 areas where you can make a significant impact without significant expense or inconvenience: paper, lights, and electronics.

The average American office worker throws out about 150 pounds of paper per year. Paper manufacturing contributes to the deforestation of the planet and in America is responsible for 35 million tons of CO2 a year. So what can you do? Buy recycled paper. Make full use of that paper by printing on both sides and/or using paper that is only printed on one side for scratch paper. Do your proofreading and edits on your computer before printing to reduce the number of prints you make. Re-use file folders by placing new labels over the old ones. All of these changes are easy to make but have a big impact. Pretty painless, right? [Read the rest of this entry...]

IBM’s philanthropic arm is currently funding a number of water-related research projects to help improve water quality throughout the world. Members of World Community Grid can donate their idle computer time to help researchers discover better and more efficient methods of keeping our rivers, lakes, and watersheds free of pollution.

Over 520,000 registered members have already contributed over 500 million results to researchers. All of these computers combined have provided more than 380,000 years of computing time toward important research. A few clicks and your PC will be helping to advance this great cause. Enjoy the video below and head on over to the World Community Grid website to donate your idle computer time.

You may not have ever considered keeping bees but information regarding the dwindling Bee populations may have made you wonder if beekeeping could be considered a new way to help save the planet.

A recent report states that there will be several new studies to look at just why Bee populations around the world are dwindling. These studies will look at things like pesticides, disease and loss of habitat. The reason why this is so important may not be apparent to a lot of us, but when you see that in some parts of the world manual pollination of certain food producing plants is already taking place, it soon becomes apparent that we need to get an understanding of this problem very soon.

These projects are to be funded by the Insect Pollinators Initiative (IPI), and will look into the decline of other pollinators such as wasps and butterflies. Others are trying to get businesses to realise the future financial problems that could occur if this decline in pollinators is not stopped, by calculating just how much the produce that we rely upon will increase if manual pollination needs to become more widespread. [Read the rest of this entry...]