Happy Earth Day Everybody!!
At OrangeRoc we don’t have anything special planned for Earth Day 2009. We live and work in one of the word’s most beautiful places and we are fortunate to have such an awesome view of the Honolulu Harbor from our office. We all feel blessed to call Hawaii our home. We reap the benefits of warm weather and clean air and water year round, and we are truly thankful for what the planet gives us every day.
As I was preparing to write this entry I thought about all of the ways OrangeRoc operates in a “Green” way. But the more I thought about all of the ways we are green, the more I realized that being green is not hard and a lot of times makes life easier without really even thinking about it. At OrangeRoc we do a lot of green things almost selfishly because it benefits us and just by coincidence also benefits the planet. Here’s a partial list:
We work with the lights off: Our office has huge windows that let in lots of natural light and the florescent lights that the office came with actually make working and designing on the computer harder. So we turn the lights off. It makes our jobs easier. If you ever visit us don’t worry, we are not vampires we just create better in natural light.
Melinda recycles our cans and bottles: This is just minimal effort for her to take them home and it helps our garbage can stay less full.
We recycle office paper: This is no extra effort. The paper just goes into our office recycling bin instead of the trash can.
OrangeRoc pays for bus passes: The majority of our staff rides the bus to work every day. This helps reduce fossil fuel use but more importantly and selfishly it reduces stress by not having us personally driving in rush hour traffic which, if you have ever lived in Honolulu, you know how bad it can be.
OrangeRoc is located close to our clients and vendors: We choose to have our office in the downtown core to be close to many of our clients and vendors so we can easily walk to meetings as well as drop off and pick up materials. It’s just more efficient for us. Sure it saves on gas but we’re all about saving minutes.
OrangeRoc encourages use of electronic documents: Both in our own office and as a recommendation to our clients, we see this as a mode of efficiency and it just happens to be green as well. We send our clients mock ups of the creative work we do in PDF format reducing the need to print and mail. We correspond with them via email like most of the world does these days. And we always are pushing our clients to market online. It’s cheaper, faster, has broader reach and saves trees and fossil fuels for delivery. Websites, email blasts, social networking and online advertising is the future of marketing and it just so happens to be green as well.
In our office we offer filtered tap water: We have a really fancy refrigerator with a really fancy water and ice filter. The water is delicious and if you stop by for a visit we’ll give you a taste. By offering filtered tap water instead of bottled water we reduce our impact on the earth by not buying plastic bottles of water. The energy in producing the plastic, filling and packing the bottles and then shipping them to our office is staggering when you think about it. We just think it’s easier to fill a glass from our fancy refrigerator..Did I mention the refrigerator is really fancy?
We print local whenever possible: Typically we do print jobs with the vendor who bids the lowest, but more and more we are considering the impact of the fossil fuels used to ship printed items from the mainland to Hawaii. Whenever possible we use local printers. It’s good business and good for the planet.
Well, that’s just some of the ways OrangeRoc is helping the planet. But like I stated previously, a lot of these things we do first because it is smart for our business and these smart things also just happen to be green. See it’s really not hard to help the planet..Happy Earth Day!!
