Tech Planning

Re: What are your favorite green tips?

donc — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:39:12 GMT

Rog - That's some really great advice about the thermos and water bottle - we are on high (target 170 litres per day) water restrictions so anything to save water is a bonus... although not sure a bidet would really help :-)

Re: What are your favorite green tips?

Anna — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:14:32 GMT

Rog, Thanks for the great tips to reduce waste (no bidet pun intended) while traveling.

We are interested in more green travel tips...esp. ones that can help reduce the need for travel. What are something that you do to keep in touch with co-workers and clients (and maybe the Starbucks barrista) when you are not traveling? Specifically, what technology tools do you use to keep in touch or collaborate remotely?

Thanks,

Anna

Re: What are your favorite green tips?

MeganKeane — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:45:22 GMT

Rog, that's definitely another way to reduce your paper consumption (pun intended).

Seriously though these are great tips. One problem I had with having water when traveling was the new regulations on liquids. I've gotten around this by packing an empty Nalgene or other water bottle and then filling it up at a water spout at one of the restaurants or drinking fountains after going through security. I've never had any trouble with security as a result and I don't have to buy overpriced water bottles just because of this regulation.

Now if we could just get the airlines working on the amount of waste generated from the individually wrapped peanuts and plastic drink cups, but that's another topic.

Best,

Megan

Re: What are your favorite green tips?

Rog — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:53:59 GMT

I bought a Stanley thermos and a Camelbak water bottle, and I estimate that I've saved about 1000 coffee cups and about 2000 water bottles in a little over a year's time.

I travel a lot, and I live in Starbucks for their internet connection and also and have to be outside to work on wireless networks with public safety and service provider companies. Water bottles would (literally) fill the floor of passenger side of my rental car every time I took it back to the airport (it was a running joke with the National Car dudes at several of the main airports I'd hit).

Buying water and coffee is extremely expensive while traveling. I went from $2 a cuppa coffee to like 36 cents at Starbucks with my gold card (they just refill it now without asking me, I'm such a regular at the locations where I travel) and I easily saved anywhere from $1 to $4 on each bottle of water (depending on where I'd get it; airports are hella expensive, and I spend 1/5 of my week in an airport quite often).

(Granted, I never had to pay for any of these expenses, it's still kinda nice to look back and think of how much I'm saving.)

On a somewhat related note, I recently used a bidet at my friend's house last week in San Francisco. He is an energy analyst (pun intended) for the city, and one of my best friends who was always the butt of our tree hugger jokes in high school. They cost a fair amount money (like $100), but the amount you save on toilet paper makes it a wash. (ok, I really gotta stop now...I could go on forever, do not encourage me!)

What are your favorite green tips?

MeganKeane — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 01:33:42 GMT

Some of you may be familiar with TechSoup's GreenTech program. As part of this program, we feature a green tip of the week--an easy thing you can do to help you and your organization reduce your environmental impact. You can also see a list of previous tips and blog posts on green topics.

I recently threw the question, "What are your favorite green tech tips?" out to my Twitter network and got these responses so far:

Unplugging or turning off your power cords when computers are not in use. from @RickenFlow

The new power strips are cool. Turn off the peripherals when the comp is off. from @jfouts

Now I'm throwing the question out to all of you folks on the forums--What are your favorite green tech tips? Post them here and we'll be sure to feature some of our favorite tips in our Green Tip of the week feed.