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Green Your Nonprofit Offices and Operations

Green Your Offices
It takes an inside champion to get an organization started on a greener pathway.  You can practice your leadership skills at the same time you develop new job skills AND green your own workplace environment by initiating a green program.  And you don't have to do it alone.  The San Francisco based Connect the Dots nonprofit is making it easy for you by providing an easy to implement system just for nonprofits!

Green Your Community Services
Connect the Dots disseminates environmental sustainability practices to nonprofit organizations to help organizations meet their social missions in an environmentally responsible manner. They provide the guidance nonprofit organizations need to realize their desire for environmental responsibility. Now nonprofit organizations can undertake the path towards sustainability and truly maximize their care for the communities they serve.
 

The Green Start Program

The Connect the Dots consulting program, the Green Start program, concentrates on high impact, minimal effort conservation practices to "jumpstart" organizations towards sustainability.

Initially, they act as an extension of an organization's staff, planning and taking action on its behalf, including scheduling audits with existing programs, creating action lists and implementing them, setting up and/or facilitating an internal "green team" group, developing a strategy, and setting up and monitoring savings.

Over time, as organizations acclimate to using our tools (e.g. action worksheets, monitoring tools, etc.), they take over their own planning, execution, and tracking of their green program.

For 3 months, Connect The Dots partners with nonprofits to serve as "personal trainers" to address the most beneficial greening processes:

  • Waste Management

  • Energy & Utilities

  • Environmentally-Preferred Purchasing Policy

  • Education & Outreach

  • Tracking & Reporting

To promote ongoing changes, the Connect The Dots' methodology integrates planning and tracking tools to help nonprofits make informed decisions about environmental sustainability.

CONTACT:
Connect The Dots
1442 Florida Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.830.5858 or 888.666.0031
www.connectthedotsnetwork.org


CGS Training Directory

Review the green and sustainable training courses and resources available to our readers. Check back often, new green job/career training courses are added frequently. TRAINING CATALOG

Green Directory: SolutionsForGreen.com ~ Certification Programs: GreenJobWizard.com

Solid waste reduction efforts are being made by continually removing items from the trash stream and diverting them to recycling.

The California Integrated Waste Management Board documents how the benefits of switching from non-recycled paper products to 100% recycled products yields the following additional savings:

NAPKINS and TOWELS

One hospital converted virgin napkins and towels to recycled content and the results were:

  • 33.80 tons of recycled paper used
  • 189,000 gallons of water saved
  • 81 cubic yards of landfill space saved
  • 110,700 kilowatts of energy saved
  • 1,620.00 pounds of air pollutants saved
BLUE WRAP

Isolation of recyclable materials from an office or hospitals' various waste streams and observing strict guidelines have allowed one hospital, St. Mary's Medical Center, to develop a system over three years of collection, packaging, storing and shipping that has reduced over 85 % of their purchased "Blue Wrap" plastic that is used to protect sterilized or "clean" health care equipment without a single incident of contamination in the shipped material. 

All of this recycling was conducted within a footprint of less than 20 square feet including processing and storage.

Recycling of "Blue Wrap' is a huge opportunity for medical offices and facilities to reduce landfill, reduce their costs for disposable plastic supplies, and provide additional environmental benefits with no loss of quality in service.

Blue Wrap may not be the largest segment of the waste stream for hospitals, but it is a unifying product they all use; and by establishing networking opportunities with local governments, recyclers and haulers, other materials can be targeted. 

Blue Wrap purchasing for 2005 in a representative sample of 60 various sized facilities found that  424,563 pounds or 212 tons of non-reusable plastic was used.  Recyclers estimate that this represents 1/3 of the combined amount of blue wrap and stretch wrap for the facilities.

It's possible to achieve a 20% reduction in the volume of waste from surgical suites.  That's significant.  
 
 


Green Directory: SolutionsForGreen.com ~ Certification Programs: GreenJobWizard.com

Green Office Certification from GreenLine Paper

GreenLine Paper offers a Green Office Certification to companies and other organizations which meet environmentally friendly certification requirements.   GreenLine also offers their monthly Green Office News e-newsletter with environmental news and tips on greener office practices.

Greenline Paper offers the Green Office Certification to companies which meet their environmentally friendly certification requirements.  The company must use energy wisely, recycle, use recycled products, and be environmentally savvy.  There are 24 questions concerning topics like energy, building construction, supplies, recycling and transportation, which determine your green ranking.  The form takes approximately 10 minutes to fill out.  If you meet the requirements, they will send you a certification graphic for your website, which when clicked, will show the date of your certification.  This do-it-yourself certificate program indicates to the world that you are environmentally concerned. Click on the logo below to begin your certification process.


Greenline Paper's Green Office Certification



Green Directory: SolutionsForGreen.com ~ Certification Programs: GreenJobWizard.com

Pill Light


This tiny little pill sized light bulb from the folks at Luxim, emits ’sun spectrum light’ and at the core of the bulb radiates the same heat level, 6,000 Calvin. That’s 140 lumens per watt - 15 lumens per watt for a regular light bulb and 70 for an LED - and converts most of its energy into actual light, unlike most lights which convert it into heat. How does it accomplish this feat? $40 million in VC funding of course.

LIFI leads a new class of solid-state high-intensity light sources that combine the best features of solid-state electronics and full spectrum plasma emitters.  The results are long-life, energy efficiency and complete color spectrum for lighting applications like general and specialty lighting and projection displays like wide screen HDTVs and projectors.

LUXIM's LIFI technology provides superior performance for high definition projection televisions and home theater projectors using DLP, transmissive LCD and LCoS microdisplay technologies.

Specialty lighting includes LIFI applications like medical and analytical instrument lighting.  Endoscopy, microscopy and other equipment are made possible with the highest level of color rendering available from a long life light source.

LIFI brings together the best qualities of solid state electronics and plasma based emitters in a high intensity light source capable of more than 140 lumens per watt.  This efficacy combined with 20,000 lumen output per source make LIFI ideal for applications in entertainment, industrial, architectural, area and street lighting.



LUXIM
Sunnyvale, California
www.luxim.com


Green Directory: SolutionsForGreen.com ~ Certification Programs: GreenJobWizard.com

Solar Powered Desk for Electronic Gadget Charging

Not all solar installations have to be on the rooftop...or even permanent in one place.  Take this new desk design:

Solo Table with Solar Power

The SOLo Lounge Table might change the working habits of teckies. Built into the surface of this roll-around table are solar panels that charge up its internal battery and power your devices. It can connect to a variety of devices and there’s a drawer for storing and charging your gadgets. The SOLo alse features Bluetooth connectivity for system monitoring in addition to the included System Monitor display/device. More info here.



Green Directory: SolutionsForGreen.com ~ Certification Programs: GreenJobWizard.com

Energy Efficiency and Green Spaces for Home Offices

Spaces for productivity require special equipment, special lighting, and special furnishings. You spend most of your waking hours at your work (and play), and it's healthful to spend your work time in healthful rooms.

Green office strategies can help clean your air, improve your light, and make your equipment more cost effective with Energy Star ratings that are measured to improve energy savings.

We're building a "magalog" to help you think through the best design for your home office and workspaces, and find the right equipment, supplies and furnishings to make yur home office productive and stimulating. You could even call it "mood lifting!

Energy, Paper and Water Efficient Solutions for Offices

Offices are energy hogs! With lighting, air conditioning, heating, ventilation, computer equipment, fans, radios, and more computers and peripherals, offices need a green and sustainable makeover! Extreme style!

This blog will help you think through your tasks, your lighting, your paper usage and all those things that clutter your mind. We're determined to help you find cost effective solutions to make your days productive and healthful!

Office Product Categories

  • Home Lighting
  • Office Lighting
  • Communication Options
  • Computer and Electronic Equipment
  • Better Paper Strategies
  • Low-impact Materials for Office Furnishings

Green Directory: SolutionsForGreen.com ~ Certification Programs: GreenJobWizard.com

About this Archive

This page is an archive of recent entries in the Green Workspace category.

Green Job Tranining is the previous category.

Home Offices is the next category.

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