Celebrating is so underrated. Some think it’s ridiculous to celebrate significant dates, achievements, or dates. But the truth is, celebrating can help you appreciate the good things in life, the challenges overcome, and achievements earned—and at the same time, celebrating can help mitigate the negative aspects of life. It boosts our feeling of well-being and it’s an incentive to strive towards the next goal.
Earth Day is a celebration of our beautiful planet, and it’s also a sober reminder that we are responsible to preserve, care for, and pass our blue and green planet on to the coming generations in a better state than we found it.
As you celebrate Earth Day, consider the ways in which you can do a little better for the environment in little and big ways. One important way to do this is to evaluate the lifecycle of your paper documents and what happens to them when you no longer need them.
Reduce Your Paper
By decreasing your paper usage, you will decrease the number of trees that are cut down, reduce the amount or paper to be recycled or ends up in landfill, and lower your office supply expenses. Here’s how:
- Convert document creation from paper to digital. This practice is more convenient for everyone and allows for file sharing no matter where they are working from.
- Avoid printing everything. Instead, get in the habit of reading and sharing digital documents.
- Communicate within your company using digital communication. Send lists, documents, approvals by electronic file and only print the final copy if and when it’s necessary.
- Move to electronic forms for your clients, customers, patients, and employees.
- When printing is necessary, print on both sides of the paper, immediately cutting consumption in half.
Shred & Recycle Your Paper
When you recycle your paper, you are essentially reusing your paper as well. But tossing documents straight into the recycling bin creates a major data breach risk you can’t afford.
Working with a reputable, NAID AAA Certified shredding company ensures your documents are securely destroyed before being recycled—and paper can be recycled many times into a wide variety of recycled paper products. Here’s why recycling paper helps:
- Dumping paper in landfills generates methane, a damaging greenhouse gas. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicates that about 25 percent of landfill in the United States is paper. That’s a lot of methane! If everyone recycled their paper, we could eliminate that source of greenhouse gases completely.
- Every ton of paper recycled saves 17 trees, 9 barrels of oil, 7,000 gallons of water, and 650 kWh of electricity.
Earth Day is Friday, April 22nd. This year, celebrate by partnering with a reputable document shredding company.
CI Information Management serves Southeastern and Central Washington and Northeastern Oregon with NAID AAA Certified, scheduled or one-time on-site mobile shredding. For more information, give us a call at 509-586-6090 or complete the form on this page. We look forward to hearing from you!
