By Dena Fritz

Streamlining your life can benefit you in many ways. Minimalists swear by this saying that clutter can burden your life and add stress needlessly. De-cluttering your life can help you be more efficient, organized and happier. When I talk about clutter, I am not just talking about the junk you have laying around. I am talking about all of it, the emotional baggage you carry around with you, in your relationships, in your past, your guilt, anger, the files on your computers and the junk laying around your house, all of it. From an eco standpoint, you can begin by starting small, working on one room at a time in your living space. If that seems insurmountable, you can start even smaller, a corner of a room, a closet, a shelf. Cleaning out even a small space can give you gratification and the motivation to go to the next small space. Keep going and soon you have your house organized and then you can move to your computer, if you haven’t used it in over a year, back it up and pack it away on a disc consolidated with all old files. This takes very little space and holds a lot of information. Then you can start with the emotional stuff. See a therapist, face your greatest fears and de-clutter. It’s wasted energy to carry all that around. You can live a more efficient life by doing this and feel more productive by focusing on the things you can change.

In your living space, remember that you can reuse items instead of buying new. When de-cluttering, keep only the essentials, I don’t recommend keeping the old manual for that boom box that you used in the 80’s. If you haven’t used it in a year, is it necessary? Analyze this for yourself. Some things have sentimental ties for absolutely no reason. I have these things myself and I have learned to rethink what is meaningful and what is not. You can do this too. Did you ever clean your purse out? What is the first thing you do? Dump it all out on the kitchen table and going through it bit by bit, throwing out the trash first then separating items in order of significance. You can’t keep too much because it is a small space so most of it goes in the trash or reused somewhere else in your space. Clothing can be one of the biggest space hogs of all, donate the stuff that you don’t wear, why keep it hoping you will fit back into those size 5’s? Not worth it. Give it some realistic thought and don’t be afraid to go with it. You will feel incredibly empowered and unburdened when you are finally done. Good luck, you deserve it!

Rent a green box is an award winning company that is taking eco-friendly solutions to moving your home goods to an all new level. Servicing areas in California, this company is expanding nationwide in the next few years.

No more cardboard and toxic packaging tape, rent a green box offers rentable, reusable green boxes for moving without the waste. Simply put, rent a green box helps you determine how many Recopacks (recycled ecological packing solution) you will need to make your move. Recopacks are lime green boxes made of 100% recycled, post consumer plastic.

Their mission is to provide relocating business and residences with an authentic and genuine earth friendly packing and moving alternative that will save time, money and Earth.

 The National Recycling Coalition has a very informative graphic on their website that will calculate your recycling and relays it into energy savings. Also on the site are 10 reasons to recycle and the top ten things to recycle.

Did you know:

• Americans throw enough paper in offices away each year to build a 12 foot high wall of paper from New York to Seattle. Making paper from recycled paper reduces contributions to air pollution by 95%.  If you recycle a Sunday newspaper every week of the year, you save 4 trees.
• Every 3 months Americans put enough aluminum into landfills to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet. The average person has the opportunity to recycle more than 25,000 cans in a lifetime. Recycling a single aluminum can saves enough energy to power a TV for 3 hours. If you recycle 24 cans per week, you save enough energy for 72 hours of viewing  TV.
• Glass can be recycled an indefinite number of times and never wears out. Making glass from recycled materials cuts related water pollution by 50%. Recycling one glass jar saves enough electricity to light a conventional 60 watt bulb for 4 hours.
• U.S. recycled 3.3 billion pounds of post-consumer plastics in 2005, keeping it out landfills. The plastic recycling industry provides jobs for more than 52,000 American workers.

Calculate your recycling efforts to see how much energy you save. It is the mission of The National Recycling Coalition To eliminate waste and promote sustainable economies through advancing sound management practices for raw materials in North America

By Dena Fritz

There is nothing greener than saving the environment from burning gas and carbon into the environment when it can be avoided. Be a spokesperson at your company and encourage your coworkers to participate in online meeting or video conferencing. It saves fuel, time, carbon emissions, money and more. It makes incredible sense when looking at it from a business perspective, especially if you have multiple employees traveling to one meeting. There are web based meeting services on the internet that offer many functions regarding company meetings. Available are webinars, interactive presenting options and telephone conferencing in conjunction with online meeting management.

Many of these sites are easy to use and make so much sense. Offering an immediate return on investment, your company will reduce travel time, improve employee productivity and enhance communications through constructive interactions, not to mention reduce your carbon footprint and help the environment.

By Dena Fritz

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I wrote this poem to extol the virtues of Best Buy and their recycle program.

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Everyone knows about the ENERGY STAR rating that comes with household appliances, right? Well do you know what it means? ENERGY STAR is a governmental joint program with the Environmental Protection Agency. In 1992, the EPA introduced ENERGY STAR as a voluntary labeling program designed to promote energy efficient products to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In our business environs, ENERGY STAR has been a force behind more widespread use of innovations like more efficient lighting, power management systems for office equipment and low standby energy use.

As an example of the work it does, in one state, say, Pennsylvania, the ENERGY STAR qualified homes built in 2009 are equivalent to eliminating emissions from 772 vehicles, saving 4,668,300 lbs. of coal, planting 1,276 acres of trees and saving the environment of 9,155,475 lbs of carbon dioxide.

Taken from the most updated specification sheets, the number of qualified ENERGY STAR clothes washers is 478 and this includes almost all popular name brands such as; Whirlpool, Amana, Frigidaire, GE, Kenmore, Maytag and Speed Queen. It doesn’t stop there; ratings include categories of appliances like air conditioners, dehumidifiers, heat pumps, light bulbs, dishwashers, computers, etc….  The ENERGY STAR website features many tips on how to improve efficiency in your new home or with home improvements. You can take a virtual walk-through of an ENERGY STAR home and it will show you how to save energy and money in all areas. There are tips on how to select a contractor and downloads for maintaining your HVAC equipment and several other topics. Give the site a look and see how much information there is available to help you save energy and money!

In our day-to-day lives, many of us spend more time in our offices than at home. As you can imagine, it is also a place where we have a ton of opportunity to be more green. What’s the best way to get your office motivated to make a difference? An office Green Team! These dedicated employees can get together, and determine ways your office can decrease it’s carbon footprint.

The best way to go about it is to pull together volunteers, and brainstorm. Set up a game plan to do research, come up with ideas, and ways to implement. Here are some topics to get your Green Team going:

- Where can we place paper recycling bings so use is maximized?

- Could we organize an office carpool?

- What are state/township guidelines for recycling (each will differ)?

- Can we switch to non-toxic cleaning products for the office?

Last week I was out of the office in systems training, and when I came back to the office this morning I was greeted by a pleasant surprise…Millennium Wealth Management won an Outstanding Recycler Award for our building! It made me proud to work with such eco-conscious colleagues, and put a smile on my face. It never ceases to amaze me how powerful, and empowering it is when each of us makes just a small step toward a greener earth.

So to my incredible cohorts….congrats on making our office, and our world a better place!

Whether you are commuting to/from work or going to a business function, hitch a ride with your co-workers. Not only is it going to be a greener ride, but you will develop stongers bonds, increasing productivity in your work. So talk to your office-mates and arrange to carpool whenever you can. Who can argue team work and greener traveling?

Rather than attend in person, set it up with your employer to have a conference call instead. Although there may be a fee for a conference call service, your company will certainly save money in the gas they would reimbursement you and your co-workers for driving to and from meetings, and most companies are looking for ways to go green. No doubt you will get kudos for your eco-friendly mentality, and you will definitely save your boss some dough!