Going Green with Andrea Dean

In this podcast I interview Kamu Enos, Education and Resource Specialist at Ma’o Organic Farms. Ma’o Farms is an organic farm that is not just growing food- they are also a social enterprise growing community leaders and entrepreneurs.


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In this podcast I interview Tom Baldwin. Tom and his wife Shannon Casey own Uluwehi Farm, a permaculture farm in North Kohala on the Big Island. Tom talks about what permaculture is and how it helps farms and homesteads to be more productive. Tom just got back from a trip to Australia where he sat at the feet of the permaculture master- Bill Mollison, the founder of the permaculture system. Tom will be sharing that new knowledge and his permaculture farm experience in January when he is co-teaching a Permaculture Design Certification course with Craig Elevitch and Nik Bertulis, the course starts Jan 5th.


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Day two was a major technical day. Mary and I both decided to consolidate our websites and blogs. I had www.coachandreadean.com and www.andreadean.com and decided just to focus all of my efforts on andreadean.com. We moved Mary’s wordpress site from akamaipromotionalstrategies.com to akamaipromotions.com. I have never moved a WordPress site from one domain to another, so that was a fun technical learning curve.


As for my site, I re-thought all of menu items and emailed the new menu and sidebar to Maya at Jelly Designs who does my custom design work. My website is a combination of a custom site and a WordPress site.


Whew! Late night…on the phone with the server hosting company for quite some time. We also got Mary’s new wireless skype headset working, which was an accomplishment.

I must admit that I found the idea of a paperless office very attractive… but could not see how I could put it into practice. Due to a bizarre set of circumstances, I was not able to get any of my papers out of my house for the last two weeks. Suddenly- I was paperless and loving it! Now to get rid of the filing cabinet and banker boxes of papers in my closet. Hmmmm…. Following is a guest blog post by Lindsay Sydenham from efilecabinet.com. I have not used this system, but knowing what a pain (and un-green) it is to file and sort paper, I am intrigued.


Go Green by Investing in a Paperless Office by Lindsay Sydenham
It takes 24 trees to produce one ton of printing and office paper.
I must admit that I found the idea of a paperless office very attractive… but could not see how I could put it intro practice. Due to a bizarre set of circumstances, I was not able to get any of my papers out of my house for the last two weeks. Suddenly- I was paperless and loving it! Following is a guest blog post by Lindsay Sydenham from efilecabinet.com. I have not used this system, but knowing what a pain (and un-green)it is to file and sort paper, I am intrigued.


Every year 4 Million tons of copy paper is used.
The number of trees used to produce copy paper for companies each year is astounding. It’s obvious why going green is a growing concern in the United States. Being environmentally conscious is finally becoming a priority in the business world. Businesses all over the country are looking for opportunities to become environmentally conscious in their business practices. Eco-friendly initiatives are not only beneficial for the environment, but they can save companies a considerable amount of money. It’s like the saying, “Hit two birds with one stone!”


One of the major ways that companies are going green is by investing in a paperless office. Ditch the paper and move to a completely electronic system. Paper is thrown away in the garbage in the United States more than any other material. Most businesses keep their records and information in hardcopy form, not databases, thus contributing heavily to the destruction of the earth’s forests.
The solution? Go paperless! Both small businesses and large businesses can benefit from investing in a paperless office where everything is stored safely in a large database. A document management system is perfect for businesses because it can help them to reduce their carbon footprint by lowering paper consumption. It can also substantially decrease the expenses associated with paper processing since there is no longer a pressing need for printing supplies, storage space, and the paper itself.
If you own your own business or work for a business that you think could benefit from going paperless, take five minutes today to request a live demo and get walked through the process of going paperless. The live demo will provide you the opportunity to have all of your questions answered. You can also take a look at a paperless office ROI calculator to calculate how much money you could save your business by moving to a paperless system. The ROI calculator will take information about the cost of employees, paper and use in your office and will compare the overall cost to the cost of a paperless management system. You will be shocked at what you will find!


Sources:
Paper Waste Statistics
Paperless Office

I attend a lot of green meetings and events, and at every single one, after sheepishly uttering the word sustainability, someone says:


“I hate using the word sustainability, we need a new word.” or “Sustainability is just so overused, we need a new word.” or “I am going to say sustainability, but really we need a new word.”


However-rarely does anyone offer a new and better word. So here we go!


If you have a better word for sustainability please let me know and I will post the list of new words on my blog! Then we can all vote on the best new word for the “concept formerly known as sustainability.”


For the record- I don’t think we need a new word. I think we need to actually start behaving in alignment with existing definitions. And here are the ones that work for me:


“Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable–to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”- Brundtland Commission Report


“Sustainability consists of harmonizing the ecological, social, and economic aspects of human activity in such a way that economic growth is consistent with long-term ecological activity.”- Brian and Mary Nattrass, Consultants and Authors of The Natural Step for Business


In my work with businesses, I am using The Natural Step definition for sustainability:
In a sustainable society:
• Nature is not subject to systematically increasing concentrations of substances extracted from the earth’s crust. (Think of the rapidity with which we extract fossil fuel and the contribution to global warming.)
• Nature is not subject to systematically increasing concentrations of substances produced by society. (Think of synthetic substances, like dioxin or plastic, that our natural environmental systems have no way of processing.)
• Nature is not subject to systematically increasing degradation by physical means. (Think of clear cutting a forest, draining wetlands, blowing off a mountain top.)
• …and in that society people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs. (Think of people displaced or living in war zones because of oil acquisition, people working in sweatshops, villages polluted with electronic waste.)


Can’t wait to hear what you guys come up with! If you are reading this on Facebook- please post your responses to my blog.