Monday, December 24, 2007

Going Paperless


DO YOUR PART!!

Did you know that a 2007 report from Javelin Strategy & Research and sponsored by CheckFree, now part of Fiserv Inc., found that if every American household viewed and paid bills online, it would:

  • Save 2.3 million tons of wood, or 16.5 million trees
  • Reduce fuel consumption by 26 million BTUs, enough energy to provide residential power to the city of San Francisco, Calif., for an entire year
  • Reduce toxic air pollutants by 3.9 billion pounds of CO2 equivalents (greenhouse gases), akin to having 355,015 fewer cars on the road
  • Reduce toxic wastewater by 13 billion gallons, enough to fill 19,846 swimming pools
  • Lower by 1.6 billion pounds the solid waste generated, equal to 56,000 fully loaded garbage trucks
  • Remove 8.5 million particulates and 12.6 million nitrogen oxides from the air, on par with getting 763,000 buses and 48,000 18-wheelers off the streets
  • Save landfill space and curb the amount of toxic chemicals—including methane gas—released into the atmosphere as paper decomposes. Methane gas has 21 times the heat-trapping power of carbon monoxide and is believed to be a major contributor to global warming
By using electronic transactions, you can save trees, and minimize transportation costs for transporting bills, statements and payments. Following are some ideas on how to cut down on your paper bills in the coming year.

1. Make a commitment to pay your bills online. This not only saves the paper used in checks and envelopes, and the transportation resources to physically move them from place to place - it also saves you 41 cents per bill in postage.
2. Take it one step further and ask your billing companies to send your bill to be viewed and paid to your financial institution’s or billing company’s web site. Reduce clutter by turning off paper bills you no longer need to receive by mail once you get into the habit of viewing and paying online.
3. And while you’re at it, ask your financial institution to send your statements electronically. Not only will you save paper, you will save time that you would have otherwise spent filing and storing. If you need a hard copy, you can print what you need.
4. Ask investment and mutual fund companies that send you annual reports and prospectuses to notify you when the reports are available online, instead of sending paper copies in the mail. You will save reams of paper each year.
5. Choose not to receive a paper receipt at the ATM machine. You will save paper, and with online banking, you don’t need the receipts. You can see your transactions daily and will have better control of your finances.
Hug a tree, not paper :)
Beth

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Techy Little Christmas


I"m a big fan of saving paper, so instead of going online and printing out those driving directions to grandma's house for your holiday dinner, consider using the TomTom Go GPS System. I was shopping at Staples the other day and I noticed they had tons of them. At $399.99, these are sure to make the top of "his" list, for sure!

I can't tell you how many times I've gotten lost navigating a neighborhood that I've been to 100's of times!

While you're there at Staples, be sure and pick up some of their cute business essentials. I found some really cute binder and paper clips that had poka-dots and stripes, oh so cute for the green mom in you!

AND, if you do have to use (recycled) paper, be sure and shred it thoroughly, Staples has those, too!
One stop shopping for the eco-mom in you!

Cheers!
Beth