QUICK Tips
Little Things You Can Do For the Environment
21 July 2017
When it comes to doing little things for the planet, conserving water and electricity are simple ways to do it. Let's check out how we can use the internet to help the environment.
Pay bills online
You can start by paying bills online instead of receiving paper bills. It can save paper and energy consumption. The postman would no longer need to go to your house to deliver paper bills. According to an article on How Much Does Paperless Billing Really Help the Environment? on Sustaingreen website, if you pay bills online instead of receiving paper bills five times a month for a year, 1.9 pounds of paper will be saved and 74 pounds of greenhouse gas could be avoided releasing into the air. Moreover, as much as 2.4 gallon of gas will also be saved. You may have water and electricity paper bills sent to you as usual, but imagine if all paper bills has been switched to online bills in the future, this could save a lot of paper and energy.
Use less paper
You can save paper at the office to help the environment. You don't have to print your documents and share them with your coworkers. Try uploading files to Google Docs that allows you to share files online. If you want to store large files, you can avoid using paper by storing them on Dropbox.
Work from home or remote working
Another option to save the environment is to work at home or remote working – telecommuting. Thanks to the internet and technology, telecommuting is possible. Sara Sutton Fell wrote an article about How Telecommuting Reduced Carbon Footprints at Dell, Aetna and Xerox on Entrepreneur website. It says that according to a survey by Global Workplace Analytics, 50% of the American workforce can be done by telecommuting. If those people work from home half the time they work in the office, they would reduce 54 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emission annually. That is the equivalent of reducing almost 10 million cars on the road. It would also save oil consumption by 640 barrels annually. Companies in America, such as Dell, Aetna, and Xerox let their employees work from home which has environmental benefits.
Taking part in helping out the environment doesn't seem to be far-fetched. If you want to start doing small things for our planet, thinking alone may not be enough. Start doing it and encourage people around you to help you too.
