Going Green and Paperless in Small Businesses

In today’s global economy, tied together with the pressure to stay green, what are the options for a paperless, more efficient, green office?  Is using technology greener that not using technology?  Sure each server or client PC you run increases your carbon footprint, at least according to an article on MSN called Green My Blog.  But also mentioned here is that using hosted services means you share that carbon footprint with the 1,000’s or 10,000’s of others using those servers.

For the past 4 years now, I have been on a mission to reduce the amount of paper that I use, and conserve as much as I can.  I am doing this at home, and at the office. Going green at the office is not only good for the environment, but it will save the business a lot of money!  This doesn’t just stop with paper, it rolls into saving money on power, and making employees more effective, saving you on payroll!  In fact, the CBS Early Show talks about saving money with green technology by cutting down on your power consumption, paper consumption and making employees more effective:

 

Windows Small Business Server can help you go green at the office by consolidating services.  And with a Dell PowerEdge Server, with the AMD Opteron Processor; you get a very eco-friendly server (using 25% less energy) to do so.  Windows Small Business Server can lessen power and paper usage with fax, by having the server answer the fax and email the fax to a fax secretary, lessening the need to keep a fax machine on as well as a server, and reducing paper usage in the office.  A standard fax machine is on 24x7, and uses paper for every outbound or inbound fax.  Or document printing to share with co-workers is a huge waste of paper (According to their study, an office worker on average uses 10,000 sheets of paper in a year! That’s 2 lbs of paper a day!).

 

Further, with Small Business Server, you can easily share files and store them securely, reducing the amount of file cabinets and folders needed around the office, saving space, and time for employees to find the data that they need.  Small Business Server provides SharePoint technology and file shares for the store method you need.  Additionally, easy to use backup and recovery technology keeps the data safe.

 

When on the road, there is no need to print out or bring pieces of paper, or a calendar with you, Windows Mobile seamlessly keeps updating with the server to bring you the latest email, calendar items and contacts.

So an investment in green technologies can and will save energy, money and make employees at a business more effective.

 

Why wait on going green at the office?  Think about saving money by investing in the right set of technology for your business.

 

What about at home?  Turn off, or sleep that PC when it’s not in use and store your files on the tiny, power friendly,  MediaSmart server from HP, running Windows Home Server.