Printing is so easy to do that it’s not hard to forget it can be pretty harmful to the environment. After all, it’s just one push of a button and a few sheets of paper, right? In reality, the chemicals contained in the ink you print will couple with the energy-consuming machinery that gets the printing done and the reams of paper that you’ll go through in a year to create an office task primed for negative environmental effect. The greenest thing you can do when it comes to printing is to not do it at all, but in today’s office that’s often far from realistic. Many of us may have switched to e-mail for most of our communications and even done away with printed notes during meetings and presentations, but there are still times when one has to put it on paper. Here are five ways to green your printing.

1. Choose an Eco-Friendly Font

For most of us, the only consideration when selecting a font is what will look best for the document, but the font you pick can be responsible for a little ink use or a lot of ink use and one of the ways to print greener is to use less ink. Steer clear of heavy fonts or anything in bold and opt for lighter fonts (often in the Serif family) with thinner lines. Better yet, download Ecofont. Ecofont is a font based on Vera Sans that’s been reworked with holes throughout to use 20% less ink—and it’s free to download and use.

2. Opt for Energy Star

If you’ve got a printer that’s in fine working order, we’re not saying you should send it to recycling and pick up a new Energy Star-rated model (buying unnecessarily is never green), but if you’re in the market for a new printer, make sure you look for that little Energy Star logo. Energy Star printers use less energy and can save you over $100 on your energy bill during their lifetimes. Take it a step further, though, by choosing an Energy Star-rated printer that’s also remanufactured or made from recycled materials. Click here to read more

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If you’ve been looking for a reason for telecommuting that will get your bosses on board with the idea, Cisco Systems has 277 million of them—that’s how many dollars the company estimates they saved by having just under 2,000 people telecommute an average of 2 days a week for a year. As is often the case with telecommuting studies, there were more benefits than just financial savings, too; telecommuters felt their quality of life was improved and the environment was saved from significant pollution.

Cisco did the study over the 2008 year, with 1,992 employees across the world taking place, with the majority of the employees saying their productivity had improved, as well as the timeliness of their work (all of which contributed to the almost $300 million savings Cisco saw). Few felt their communication with coworkers was negatively affected by telecommuting and the vast majority felt their overall quality of life improved. Click here to read more

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Most of us who work in offices enjoy a little water cooler chat from time to time, but far fewer of us think to talk about water coolers themselves, which is understandable as they’re not the most thrilling conversation starter. What we’re overlooking, however, are the environmental and health effects of using water coolers. By this point, we’ve all started to realize that drinking bottled water is a bad idea if we’re going to try and limit our consumption of petroleum and keep slow-to-degrade plastics out of landfills. There are even ads on TV reminding us that the five minutes you’ll sip from a disposable plastic water bottle are countered with hundreds of years of it sitting in a landfill. Worse yet, new concerns are being raised about the bisphenol A (BPA) content in bottled water. All this information has spurred the purchases of stainless steel reusable water bottles and Brita filter pitchers, but what about at the office?

The very plastic that most water cooler jugs are made from is often made of BPA-containing polycarbonate and information on the quality of the water inside is often vague. Since we’ve given up polycarbonate water bottles wherever possible (even Nalgene has switched their materials to avoid it), why are we still drinking from the stuff at water coolers, where water might sit in jugs for a long period and even be heated by the sun, which encourages leaching? The fact is, we need water coolers. As great as it would be if everyone brought their reusable water bottle every they went and refilled regularly, it’s not the case, and businesses have to provide safe drinking water to workers and visitors (even if it may not be as safe as they think). What we need is better water coolers; enter Timberline Springs. Click here to read more

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If you’re needing a gift in the near future, we’ve got something that will suit just about everyone, won’t break the bank, and is as green as it gets. What is this wonder item? The 2009 Plantable Eco Calendar by Botanical Paperworks. At first glance it looks like a normal desk calendar (albeit one with a sophisticated and simple design), but closer inspection reveals not only paper made with 100% post-consumer waste, but paper embedded with wildflower seeds. It’s not simply an aesthetic move, either; the pages of this desk calendar, which are loose, can be planted instead of tossed into the trash, and in no time will result in plenty of pretty wildflowers.

The great thing about gifting a calendar is that it’s likely to actually be used (and green gifts are ones that won’t just sit in a cupboard for years before being thrown away), and where conventional calendars can seem entirely too boring to excite any gift recipient, the Plantable Eco Calendar is creative enough to be a worthy offering for even picky people. We think it would be especially perfect, however, for anyone who has an interest in gardening—or, for that matter, going green. From an environmental perspective is doesn’t get much better. After all, once the year is up all the remains are a few flowers and a reusable and recyclable tin. And at $25, the Eco-Calendar won’t strain your recession-reduced budget. Click here to read more

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Working from home is an eco-friendly practice since you can cut down on unnecessary resources like transportation, but you can make it even more eco-friendly by buying an green office chair. Did you know that many traditional desk chairs are upholstered with fabrics that have been treated with stain-resistant waterproof finishes and fire retardants? It’s true, and those finishes can off-gas formaldehyde and other nasty volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the air. Suddenly finding it hard to concentrate on your work?

Look for eco-friendly furniture options like the Steelcase Leap chair, which is made from up to 30% recycled materials. The manufacturing process uses powder-coated paints, water-based adhesives and it’s VOC-free. In fact, the chair is certified for indoor air quality by SCS Indoor Advantage. The cushioning is made from 50% post-consumer PET or recycled plastic soda and water bottles. When shipped, the chair doesn’t come in a box, it’s blanket wrapped instead to cut down on waste. The chair also has Silver Cradle to Cradle product certification from MBDC.

And about that concentration? Click here to read more

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