Corporations Going Green

By Sharon Meyer

Would you support a company taking a stand to better the environment over one that did not take the extra precautions?

Soon enough you may not have to make that decision. Many large corporations are taking the path previously less chosen and becoming eco-friendly in any way possible.

“If the entire world live like the average American, we need five planets to provide enough resources,” states a statistic taken off of webecist.com. Now how many Americans do you know that take the time to Reduce Reuse and Recycle? You many only have to use one hand to count the number of people you know.

Luckily, large corporations like EMI Music, a marketing company for major labels located in the Harborside Financial Center in Jersey City, are waking up and realizing that the amount of unnecessary waste they produce can be stopped by slight changes in the office.Many of the tasks that take place in this office have to do with printing hard copies of thousands of Royalties papers, printing Emails for interns to package POP, making copies of Request Time Off Sheets, as well as financial paperwork. Included in that is the packaging that gets sent out to each label, ADR, and Sales reps across the country.

Now think of every large corporate company you can, and multiply that waste of paper by the number of companies you can think of – what a waste of trees when there are other ways to get around wasting all this paper. None of this sounds eco-friendly in the least, right?

That is the way things used to be done at EMI, just one of the major companies stepping up in the fight for a better environment. To begin with, instead of making copies of all the Royalties paperwork, financial reports and every other piece of paper that needs to be copied, EMI has invested in a network scanning system. Here is how it works:

To begin, the paper is no longer copied, but when it is taken to the copy machine, it is placed on a setting called “Network Scanning.” Once the setting is selected the paper is fed into the copy machine and it is scanned to a website that the entire building has access to. Once the files are scanned, the person who is scanning them will head to a computer, and login to the website that allows access to the scans. Once the user is logged in, they can download the file and email it to any location it needs to be instead of mailing actual hard copies to the necessary destination. Think about how much paper is saved because of such a thing like “Network Scanning.”

This one slight change in the way the company runs has improved the environment in numerous ways. One instance is the power saved from not having to use existing printer equipment. Putting numerous people on a scanning network can allow many of the printing equipment to be retired, saving massive amounts of energy and financial costs.

When it comes to packaging many of the POP (posters, giveaways, and sales tools) UPS, another large company, has also joined the “GREEN” bandwagon.

UPS supplies hundreds of companies who do bulk mailing with express envelopes for them to package it in. Those boxes are not easily reusable once they are opened, until now at least. UPS has designed new envelopes that are actually green in color, and have directions on how to use the seal on the box properly, so that it can be re-used by the person receiving the package. This inspires people who are not so keen on re-using the envelopes to use them again because it is showing them the simple easy way to re-use it.

UPS is motivating large companies to take a step forward by going green. EMI is a company that uses these “green” envelopes. Being able to reuse these packages will decrease paper loss and save thousands of trees yearly. The more companies that join this fight for a greener tomorrow, the easier it will be to save our planet.

One company which was once a major contributor to water pollution, DuPont, has turned its focus to lowering its emissions of airborne carcinogens and greenhouse gases, according to www.businessundit.com. The company was once known as the highest contributor to pollution emissions.

Now DuPont announces on its website, “DuPont is developing new refrigerant compounds as part of its ongoing program to seek longer term sustainable alternative solutions for refrigerants that have high global warming potential (GWP), and are used widely in automotive air conditioning, home refrigerators, supermarkets and store display cases as well as in building and home air conditioning systems. DuPont Fluorochemicals has identified proprietary refrigerants that have a reduced global warming potential (GWP) and are suitable for use in future automotive air conditioning systems.” This is one of the ways Dupont is trying to aid the environment.

Home Depot also makes the list of a previous environmental offender now is taking strides to fix its mistakes by starting a policy called “no old growth sales” which was enforced by over 45,000 customer calls and letters, according to businesspundit.com. This policy enforces the not harvesting trees from old growth rain forests. Old Growth trees are defined as, “Forest or woodland having a mature ecosystem characterized by the presence of old woody plants and the wildlife and smaller plants associated with them,” according to answers.com. “Rainforest destruction contributes 25 to 35% of global warming gases to the atmosphere, thus adding substantially to the warming of the Earth,” according to a website titled Home Depot Sucks, “Tragically, Home Depot and other home improvement centers sell large quantities of tropical and temperate rainforest wood and rainforest wood-containing products.”

When communities take action for the safety of the environment, companies abusing the environment have to take action to right the wrongs they have done. By taking action they are showing large corporations that they must not take the short cuts that harm the environment to save themselves money, otherwise their consumers will refuse product and ultimately bring the company down until they surrender.

Furthermore, when large companies take an extra step and change more than what their consumers were asking them to change, like EMI Music and their environmentally friendly office practice, it makes them look even better in the eyes of the consumer.


For Further Information Visit:

http://www.homedepotsucks.com/reliefPaper.cfm
http://vocuspr.vocus.com/VocusPR30/Newsroom/MultiQuery.aspx?SiteName=DuPontNew&Entity=PRAsset&SF_PRAsset_PRAssetID_EQ=103432&XSL=MediaRoomText&PageTitle=Fact%20Sheet&IncludeChildren=true&Cache=
http://www.answers.com/topic/old-growth

Sharon Meyer is a senior at Ramapo College majoring in Communications with a focus in Journalism. She hopes to pursue a career in any field that can use and enhance her writing ability.