Best practices for the best giving campaign

Size doesn't matter. Small and mid-size organizations can learn from Oregon's largest employee giving campaign.  With 50,000 employees, The State of Oregon increases its employee giving by 9.5% a year on average since 2004. Read more>

Mission: Green

Does your organization have a Green Team?

A Green Team (or Sustainability Team) is a group of staff members or volunteers working to implement an environmentally friendly workplace.  They also help employees live greener at home. If your company has one, pass this on to your Green Team peeps. Earth Share is a resource for Green Teams to help them move forward.  See Green Team page>

Hit ctrl-alt-del on e-waste

If you plan to recycle your old television, consider asking the recycler where it ends up.  "An estimated 50 to 80 percent of electronic-waste (e-waste)  collected in the U.S. for recycling is exported to areas such as China, India or Pakistan, where workers taking apart the old machines are handling toxic chemicals that can pose serious health problems," according to WIRED Magazine.  Read more on Portland area e-waste recycling>

Don't fret! Thanks to the work of 20 Earth Share members with other conservation groups, e-waste recycling will soon be easier and environmentally sound.  Oregon House Bill 2626 establishes manufacturer responsibility for the end of life free recycling of computers, laptops, monitors and televisions and ban these products in landfills. Learn how small businesses and nonprofits can recycle for free>

Eco-Tips:

Less Trash Talk

Even the Queen of the Talk Show is going green in the workplace. Oprah Winfrey's company Harpo goes through about 1,600 paper cups a day -- or 32,000 cups a month -- which employees use for water, coffee and tea. All that waste adds up to serious money. Harpo spends approximately $41,000 each year on disposable paper cups! On April 14th, Oprah declared on national television that Harpo will replace paper cups with good ol' fashion mugs.

So save your company some money and the environment, implement a paper cup-free policy. (Source: www.oprah.com)

Screensavers are energy hogs.  Yes, really.

Screen savers were first introduced to prevent phosphor burn to CRT monitors.  However, a screen saver that displays moving images causes your monitor to consume as much electricity as it does in active use.  Because, modern LCD and CRT monitors are no longer prone to "ghost image" damage, why not just turn off your monitor or turn on your automatic "sleep mode" feature?

The EPA estimated that using a computer's "sleep mode" reduces its energy consumption by 60 to 70 percent, and for a typical company that's a whole lotta money saved on electricity bill, not to mention helping to reduce carbon dioxide emission.

Please feel free to pass this newsletter along to your co-workers.  Find out the latest environmental news and see upcoming events anytime at earthshare-oregon.org.