Did you read the United Nations "Do something green tips"? And immediately thought of more possible green activities that could be included in the general and ordinary day suggestions for a greener society. Make them visible to others and share them in the form at the bottom of this page. The best ideas will be rewarded!
Exemples of registred tips:
"Drive to work! Plants thrive on CO2, so try to create more of this trace gas which comprises 4/10000ths of the atmosphere."
Notdrinkin Dakoolaid, Denmark
"Using "ecologically sustainable" fonts for printing digital documents. An example of this type of fonts is EcoFont (http://www.ecofont.eu/ecofont_es.html). Their characters contains white spaces for reducing ink in printing documents while maintain an good appearance (using sizes from 6 to 12 points)."
Luis Maria Camara Rossi, Spain
"Work from Home" with the latest colloboration tools is Future Mantra. Sevice organizations should exploit this option as much as possible."
Kalateet Vyas, India
"Eliminate the energy comsuming air-conditioning on the workplace by using natural ventilation and simple mechanical sunscreens. Airco is completely useless."
Luc De Kesel, Belgium
"Don't push it! Thinking and acting green is like excercising - you do it less if you feel a pressure to "perform". For example, if you don't recycle your garbage today, then start with e.g. metal and glass - not that hard! If you happen to like it then continue with paper, plastic, etc. And don't feel bad when you do "wrong" - feel good when you do "green"! You can do the same way with your food (e.g. continue to eat meat but eat less and vary your diet) or driving habits (take your bike when it's sunny) - take one step at the time and feel in what ways YOU are comfortable with greener living. Hopefully many ways!" :-)
David Nicklasson, Sweden
"Use extended synthetic motor oil in your automobile. Benefits are:
a. It is good for 12 months or 15,000 miles.
b. It increased my gas mileage by about 2 MPG.
c. The cost is about $40 a year for the oil and an extended life motor oil filter if you change it yourself.
d. The engine runs smoother and quieter.
e. The engine runs cleaner longer.
Synthetic oil has greater temperature extreme tolerances. Meaning, it can sustain both higher and lower temperature extremes before it would break down. Conversely, conventional motor oil breaks down easier to one of 2 base products, either tar or paraffin (wax), which then gums up your engine internals. I use synthetic oil in all of my vehicles, and the engine internals that I can see look brand new. The cars have 125,000 miles on average and are an average of 11 years old. I started using synthetic oil when I first bought my vehicles. You should consult your mechanic first if you are switching between conventional and synthetic oil as I’ve heard mixed messages about doing this.
Matt Wilcoxen, US
"Avoid traveling large distances, except on bike/foot. This applies both to business travel and leisure. How can this be accomplished? For business purposes, ideas have already been mentioned. For leisure, discover your own neighborhood, choose a destination that can be reached without driving a whole day or more and avoid flying to reach your destination."
Pieter Veefkind, Netherlands
"Implement Green Hosting principles in *all* our datacenters - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_hosting"
Åke Järvklo, Sweden
"Plant your own vegetables and flowers. Nowadays a lot of comfort food comes in big plastic containers. My mom has been reusing these containers for the last few years to plant vegetable and flower seeds. Seeds can be bought from a lot of stores. This way you can grow your own vegetables. They are pesticide free, cheap and fun to watch while they grow. Plus they are a great stress reliever. Just spend a few minutes each day caring for your plants and you feel a lot happier overall".
Marc Hartsuiker, Netherlands
" Use energy saving lights or better led spot lights instead of 50w halogen spot light. A led spot light uses max 3w."
Benjamin Gollenia, Germany
"We all celebrate birthdays of our team mates within our teams or projects, where we spend money on cakes, snacks and swanky gifts. Instead of (or along with) this, if we can gift a plant to the team mate on this special occasion, it can practically spread the environmental awareness."
Amit Khodke, India
"Start hating plastic bags. The plastic bags we used for a few minutes last upto 15 - 1000 yrs in the environment. Burning these bags release toxic fumes. Get a funky re-useable or cotton bag instead and say 'no thanks' to plastic bags."
Salim Qureshi, India
"Always shut down the PC when you leave for the day. No CTRL+ALT+DEL or CTRL+L."
Amit Singh, India
"Initiate tree planting in schools, Colleges and Offices.Once the trees are planted the individuals who have planted the trees should take the responsibility to grow and maintain it. Second thing we can do is reduce the cutting of trees , even if one tree is cut it should be replaced by two more trees. By bringing new automobiles to the market which are powered by solar energy electricity."
Deepak Chougule, India
"I believe we should encourage the "Green Revolution". May be we should encourage a program of sort in which each employee gets a chance to make a small contribution and let him/her be a sponser/gaurdian for a sapling. Lets have forest by name "Sogeti" :-)"
Aneesh Yashodharan, India
"STOP SMOKING: The paper required by 500 pack carton requires a full grown tree to be cut. Almost 40-50% of world population smokes nowadays :). A lot of tree can be saved, which will lead to better environment/atmosphere."
Sachin Sapkale, India
"Maybe this one has already been said, but buy biological products. It's often more expensive, but at least the animals you are consuming have been treated well! Also biological products are better for your health. Buy green electricity and gas from your supplier in stead of “normal” energy. Don’t throw garbage, cigarettes and/or gum on the streets or into the woods. The following website also indicates (amongst other things) how fast we are consuming the world’s resources: http://www.worldometers.info/
If you don’t have room to plant a tree: Buy one in the rainforest in Brazil. If Sogeti would buy a certificate for each employee in stead of the normal presents (Birthday, etc.), we could buy lots of trees every year! http://www.rainforestforever.org/buy_a_tree.asp
Finally: next time you’re getting into a heated discussion at work, try to relax! Remember that you are producing CO2 with every breath you take ;).
John Simons, The Netherlands
"Save water: Lots of us have a one-lever-fitting in their bathroom, but its use is ineffictive. It's easy to shut down the waterflow while washing your hands with just a "splash" of water and soap and afterwards pushing the lever again to wash soap away. And most of us have a aesthetic sense and keep the lever in middle-position, which means 50% warm water and 50% cold. Do you really need 50% warm water, that only gets warm after a while after you actually finished washing hands? Another green tip: if you have a very old toilet water-container where the float cannot be adjusted for less water refill: just put a brick inside. It reduces the volume of the water-container. And if you have the possibility: collect water of your washing machine for your toilet instead of using drinking water.
Hauke Hinrichs, Germany
"In an effort to reduce travelling (via auto, train, plane, etc), Sogeti should implement and support full use of technologies: video conf, web, streaming, flash, etc. Some of these can be implemented locally while others will require country collaboration. Integrate GREEN KPIs into your local business model ."
Tom Luers, USA
"Using energy-efficient lamps, switch off the monitors and unnecessary lights at the office every day to reduce energy consumption. Avoid to lease "big" company cars with high consumption."
Andreas Richter, Germany
"Know your local environment well. Visit parks, gardens, zoos, etc. with your friends and learn more about environment. Join a community group in your local area and spare few hours in a week to do something for our environment on regular basis."
Mandar Joshi, India
"Why don´t we establish an totally carfree day at Sogeti, on country level, where all employees travel to work and client meetings with just environmentaly friendly transportations? In Sweden we have a very well developed network of bicycle lanes so why don´t use them to what they are ment for? Establish an annual 2-wheelday in true Sogeti spirit. "Sogeti goes green" and in that way challange and show our customers and our competitors on the market the we care and deliver green IT on all levels including transportations."
Kenneth Hansen, Sweden
"Minimize the amount of travelling within the company by using collaboration tools to a greater extent like wikis, blogs, webex, but also facebook, youtube and MSN."
Fredrik Scheja, Sweden
"Using high performance solar panels (>200Watt)is an investment that pays itself back in no time. Maybe an idea to put some on the roof of the HQ of Sogeti."
Johan Cappaert, Belgium
"Utilize services like mail stopper(http://mailstopper.tonic.com/) or 41 pounds (www.41pounds.org) to stop most of the junk mail coming to your home. Some statistics on junk mail: Stop Junk Mail — a Personal Nuisance & Environmental Hazard * Keep trees in the forest. More than 100 million trees are destroyed each year to produce junk mail. 42% of timber harvested nationwide becomes pulpwood for paper. * Reduce global warming. The world’s temperate forests absorb 2 billion tons of carbon annually. Creating and shipping junk mail produces more greenhouse gas emissions than 9 million cars. * Save water. About 28 billion gallons of water are wasted to produce and recycle junk each year. * Save time. You waste about 70 hours a year dealing with junk mail."
Charles Fox, US
"Point your local government towards Better Place. Once the infrastructure for electric cars is there the cars will follow. -Hold out on a new car for a few years if possible. A new car cost 500 kg of CO2 to produce!"
Paul Van Rompaye, Belgium
"Be conscious of environmental damage of any product you purchase and try to choose the more green alternatives when buying groceries, electronics, a car or whatever! I doesn't always cost extra, it can actually save you money a lot of times by saving on energy consumption, efficient packaging and it's beneficial for your health. So why not take that into account when buying a TV, computer, soft drinks (in larger packages instead of small) an units) and toxic free vegetables."
Roy Wasse, Netherlands
Print 2 pages a sheet- if your eyes tolerate it. In combination with printing in booklet form I experienced it as very comfortable reading! Note: For selecting the booklet form, go to printer properties, select the tab Finishing, and then the Booklet layout. Tip number 2: Support(/ participate) in at least one initiative ( or institution) which aims to (re)distribute welfare (in broad sense) more equally around the world. Only if people are not hungry, in war, or in other bad circumstances, they are able to think green. Tip number 3: Try to teach yourself reading from the monitor, instead from paper."
Joyce Nijkamp, Netherlands
"At the end of your working day: switch off your pc, monitor and the light in the building. PC's and monitors that are left on during the night cost a fortune on electricity. Also clean up your stored files on servers. We store Terrabites of unused files. Server storage is one of the most energy consuming things. Al those servers must be cooled by airco."
Dave de Bruin, Netherlands
"Start with 3 Steps in natural way: 1. COMPOSITING; It is the microbial decomposition of organic and dead materials into compost. Compositing allows organic matter such as vegetable food waste and paper products to decompose and become nutrient-rich soil. This soil is perfect for growing plants in any environment u can do it by keeping the compost bin somewhere in your backyard, and dump all the organic matter into it. After a couple months, warm, rich, great smelling compost comes out the bottom. 2. STORING RAINWATER; capture delicious rainwater for home use? It's easy, and (so far) rainwater is free! All you have to do is get one of our rain barrels and let it fill up with water when it rains. How? Hook it up to the gutters on your roof, or some other easy way of capturing the water that falls on your roof ,Rainwater harvesting is an easy and highly effective way to capitalize on the extreme shifts in weather patterns. 3. PLANT A GARDEN; Green Home provides many resources for environmentally friendly yard and garden products that will help you create an energy-efficient, pollutant and chemical-free garden for your home. Greener Place helps in conserving energy, control rainfall runoff and flooding, lower noise levels, and provide a refreshing source of oxygen."
Deepak Singh Negi, India
"Use your roof. I have always wondered why most of the time a roof only has such limited functionality. There are lots of things to do with your roof like: - Create a roofgarden on it. This in turn insulates the roof, filters the water and reduces the amount of water coming from the roof during heavy rains. - Its a great place to place solar panels to catch the suns rays. - Catch the roofs water and use it to water the plants. - A combination of the previous." ;)
John Alberts
"Best way is car pooling , if traveling to the same destination. well certainly reduce the traffic and reduce the pollution."
Amit Singh, India
"When you have a lot of traffic jams in the city you work and/or you have to search a long time to find a parking place, there is a healthy & time-saving solution : take a bike with you into your car, at the border of the city you can use the bike : you are much faster, no parking problems (so less stress) and better for your body condition. P.S. When your bike doesn't fit into your car, you have a nice solution nowadays : folding bikes. OK, they are not for free, but you can also take it with you (for free) in the bus or train."
Johan Verhaert, Belgium
" On my brithday I received a nice winebottle from Sogeti in a wooden box. Together with my daughter (5 years old) we drilled a small hole in the back of the to hang it on a wall. In the front we made a bigger hole for a bird to get through. We painted the outside to stay in shape longer then a year in all weather condidtions. The box from last year contains a great titmouse family. The new box will probably being used next spring. At that time it will also be acclemated to look like old wood for the birds
Bert Leibbrand, Netherlands.
"Reward employees that choose a fuel-efficient car model and/or save fuel when driving. E.g.: give an award for the employee that spent the least fuel/km in the past year. Or, less symbolic: allow a car budget discount when selecting a particle filter (which is alas still an OPTION only...)."
Patrick Vandermeulen, Belgium
"Avoid meat consumption. By going vegetarian you are not only reducing pollution from transport and methane gas released from cows, pigs and poultry. You will also contribute to water savings and less stress on the animals. A side effect is a healthy heart, less body fat and longer life! Albert Einstein knew what he was talking about."
Johan Sebring, Sweden
"Use your company car as less possible. Use public transport and other environmental friendly transport methods. I use my bike and train to go to work (118km single trip) instead of going by car. Shorter travel because you avoid traffic jams, better for the environment (less fuel you use, less maintentance, less toxic gases, ...), better for your personal health, ..."
Colijn Devriese, Belgium
"Eco driving. I make it a sport to not make unnessecary brakes and always plan my driving. Its like my own competition where I try to get from A to B better and better for each time. Fun and easy to save fuel and enviorment for those who still have to drive."
Gabriella Ekström, Sweden
Green tip form
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