Every discarded empty ink or toner cartridge dumps about 1.4 kilos of unnecessary waste in landfills—which could take as much as 1000 years to decompose.

When it comes to the printer and photocopier at work, conserving the environment could unintentionally be the last thing on your mind as you frantically work towards having that 100-page report done on time. And while eliminating printer/copier usage altogether might not yet be a realistic option for businesses, there are tangible ways to increase the efficiency of your office print room while reducing the negative impact on the environment. This includes reducing or eliminating colour printing, always printing double-sided, and thinking twice before printing that email.

But in order to truly understand how important it is to take action when it comes to smarter technology usage at work, you need to first get an idea of how significant the numbers are when it comes to the amount of waste coming from North American businesses in a year… let’s take ink and toner for example:

The total weight of ink and toner cartridges thrown away each year from photocopiers and printers is equal to 75, 612 Ford Explorers!
(Source: Recharger Magazine)

With alarming stats like these, we were sparked to take action.

AND THEN IT WAS TIME TO THINK!
So in 2007, Grand & Toy partnered with Core Recycling to create a program that would make it easy for businesses to proactively help reduce that number—and so THINK! was born. With THINK!, we collect empty ink and toner cartridges from offices, and as a true commitment to environmental conservation, Grand & Toy will remanufacture these cartridges wherever possible, and recycle all others that cannot go through the remanufacturing process. We guarantee it.

Plus we go the extra mile to reduce our carbon footprint by collecting these empty cartridges while making pre-arranged deliveries to cut-down on gas emissions. It might seem like a small detail, but multiply those pick-ups on a national level and you’ll see how quickly all those little details add up! So why not spark your own office into action and set the example for the rest of the business community to follow. To arrange for your empty ink & toner cartridge pick-up, call 1.866.391.8111, or e-mail tonerpickup@grandtoy.com… and who knows, we might even select you as the GREENOFFICE Hero of the month!

PUTTING A PLUG IN THE POWER DRAIN AT WORK
Besides becoming more proactive in reducing landfill waste from empty ink and toner cartridges, there’s another environmental factor at the office to consider—power… or more importantly, power waste.

Two decades ago, office equipment accounted for only one percent of the total energy consumed in a typical office. Today that number is as high as 20%

Printers, fax machines, computers… all a big part of keeping your office running, and all big contributing factors to increased demands on our power grids. So this is where the effort on all our parts come in, for example:

• Installing motion-sensing lighting at the office
  (so the lights aren’t on when no one’s home so-to-speak)
• Instead of having multiple single-function devices such as a photocopier, and a fax machine and a printer, consider switching to energy-efficient multi-function devices
• Save money and demand on the power grid by replacing inefficient equipment with Energy Star energy-efficient products
• Always power down your computer at the end of the day and turn off all desk lights when you’re away from your desk
• If you have a cell phone or battery charger plugged in at your desk, unplug the charger once your device is powered up because even if the device is not connected, the charger is still drawing power from the outlet
• Avoid using screen savers as they cause your monitor to consume the same amount of power as if your monitor was running normally

TECHNOLOGICAL ODDS AND ENDS… IT ALL ADDS UP
Pens, CDs, DVDs—to that old desk light you’ve been meaning to get rid of, there’s a lot you can do with it besides trashing it!

• Use re-recordable DVDs and CDs to store data and reuse them accordingly
• Call your city to ask about their recycling program—if they don’t take back CDs and DVDs, they can most likely tell you who will
• If your office equipment is a throw-back to the ‘dot matrix’ era but still working,  why not donate it to a local non-profit organization or community group?
• Did you know that all cell carriers in Canada provide a return bag with postage paid? Well if you didn’t, now you do—so call them instead of tossing that old mobile phone in the trash!

BECAUSE GREEN IS OUR COLOUR… GREEN IS OUR MINDSET
While we’ve established that we all still need to print, fax and consume energy within this competitive business world, by making wise technology choices and staying informed of our eco-alternatives, we can still be productive in a way that keeps within the spirit of GREENOFFICE thinking!