How to Go Green When Buying Office Supplies

Thanks to an increasing number of environmentally-conscious business owners, purchasing green office supplies is the newest trend. In fact, it has even become the more convenient option for business owners due to the growing green market.

If you want to learn how to make your office more environmentally friendly in 2012, you can use the following tips to “go green” when purchasing your next shipment of office supplies:

Paper

When buying paper for the office, the best rule of thumb is to look for paper products that contain the largest percentage of post-consumer content. According to Office Depot, the majority of paper products sold to offices in the US still contain absolutely no recycled content.

By making the switch to a small amount of recycled content in your paper products, you will be helping, reduce water and air emissions, lessen energy usage, and minimize environmental waste.

Internet Fax

The latest business phone systems offer lots of eco-friendly options, starting with Internet faxing capabilities.

The traditional fax machine is a standby office tool that uses unnecessary amounts of paper and electricity on a day-to-day basis. On top of that, many offices are now considering fax machines to be out of date since most documents today are transferred and shared via the Internet (aka e-Fax).

If you do need to receive a fax for business purposes, it is best to use an Internet faxing system in your office to eliminate wasted paper and the cost associated with using a traditional fax machine. So the next time you are considering buying a new fax machine (which also comes with paper costs), consider a new telecom set up, such as VoIP.

VoIP and business VoIP service not only saves you money on paper, but it can also cut your long distance calls. Helping the environment and saving money – winning!

Remanufactured Cartridges

You will still need to print from time to time in your office, even as you rely more on e-mail and document transfer through cloud-based systems online. However, when printing, the best environmentally friendly solution to use is remanufactured cartridges.

Remanufactured ink cartridges are assembled through collecting, sorting, dismantling, cleaning, refilling, and repackaging used cartridges for resale. In the remanufacturing process, as many original parts as possible are reused to reduce the need for new materials.

Remanufactured ink cartridges are filled with fresh toner and ink to ensure the same premium quality in printing and copying – with significantly less impact on the environment. In fact, Office Depot reveals that one remanufactured toner cartridge can keep an average of 2 ½ kg of plastic out of landfills. When comparing new ink cartridges to remanufactured ink cartridges, up to 80% less energy is expended overall.

Making simple choices to go green can benefit the environment and significantly cut down on your yearly office spending. In addition to feeling good about saving money, you’ll also feel good knowing you’re saving the environment.