What are you doing to help save the planet? It’s Earth Day on April 22, but you don’t have to wait till then. Environmental issues need attention right now. Office technologies can help your business to go green. Here are three environmentally friendly tech solutions to consider.
Replace Your Fax Machine with a Fax Server Solution
Offices typically use masses of paper, often wastefully, which means that businesses destroy a lot of forests. Digital communications can minimize paper use, but it’s still estimated that offices increase their paper consumption by 20% each year. If you want to make a difference to the environment then going paperless is an important way to do it.
The fax machine is a big paper-waster. Introduced in the 1970s, fax machines have had their day. With a fax server solution you can send faxes from your email inbox. Of course you can’t control whether the recipient then prints it out, but at least you’ve reduced the paper used in faxing by at least half. Feel free to smash your fax machine – or, since you want to go green, recycle it or dispose of it responsibly.
Paper Scanners
Are your filing cabinets overflowing with paper? How many trees have gone into filling up the cabinets in your office? The latest paper scanning tech solutions are a key part of going paperless. Some of the paper scanners now available, like Doxie, are Wi-Fi enabled, so you can send your scans to the cloud for storage in a flash.
With digital copies of your paperwork, you can probably get rid of most of the originals. The glory of paper is that it’s easily recycled. Shred the old stuff and make sure it goes somewhere where it can be turned back into paper. If everyone did this, a whole lot of majestic trees could be saved. It’s also a great way to declutter and create extra office space. You may have empty cabinets – if so, they can also be recycled, or repurposed.
Virtual Servers
You can reduce the number of servers you run by virtualizing them. This involves consolidating older server units into newer, more powerful ones. You could reduce your servers by three quarters or more! Quikteks specialised in combining new technologies, cloud computing and IT best practices. Going greener is not just the ethical choice, but with server virtualization you could make dramatic savings on electricity usage. The savings that medium to large businesses have made by virtualizing their servers is significant, and your electricity consumption can be reduced by as much as 80% – though even half that would be good for your business and the planet.
Technology alone isn’t going to save the earth, but it does offer many solutions for more environmentally-friendly business practices. Every business also needs eco-friendly policies that every employee complies with. Simple things like turning off the lights, switching off computer monitors, adjusting the thermostat and committing to recycle waste whenever possible make a real difference. To find out more about technologies to make your business greener and more environmentally responsible, call Quikteks at (973) 882-4644.