Monday, January 25, 2010

SAVE TREES. NOT PAPER. You can help save 34 million trees!

It’s hard to deny that the world is going paperless. As transactions and commerce continue to fly exponentially along that path, we may not like it, but it’s not going away. As a matter of fact, it’s only going to intensify. One major Financial Institution with over 10 million clients has already strategically decided that by 2012, they will NOT send out a single piece of paper to clients if they can avoid it.

Greystone Design + Communications is proud to partner with and support the Electronic Filing Cabinet for Dummies. Our good friend, Michael Schweizer, is the creator of the Electronic Filing Cabinet For Dummies® product, a licensed partnership with Wiley Publishing’s For Dummies® brand. Together they produce products that help Consumers & Small Businesses save, manage and protect their important Documents and Information

More Staggering Facts-Save Trees Not Paper™
The environmental opportunity created by this surge is already staggering …some startling statistics :
• If every North American with a home PC (250 million) received and filed the Bills and Statements that are already available electronically from their Banks and Utilities, each would save an average of 700-900 pieces of paper and 200 envelopes per year. That’s 275 Billion pieces of paper!
• If every Tax Payer chose to Save their return as a PDF and e-file with the government, that would save another 5 Billion sheets of paper
• If every e-bay shopper saved their purchase receipt electronically instead of printing it, that’s over 1 Billion sheets of paper!
• If all 26 million weekly online shopper in North America chose to save their purchase receipt electronically instead of printing it, that would save another 1.35 Billion sheets of paper!

That’s a startling 280 Billion sheets of paper annually which equals 34 million trees saved! (the average pine tree yields approximately 8333 sheets of standard photocopy paper )

In addition, our example would also save:
• 9.9 Billion Gallons of fresh water
• 5.8 billion KW hrs of electricity
• 85 million lbs of air pollution…all annually

5 Simple Steps
So how do you get there? By taking these 5 Simple Steps both in your own lives and Businesses
1. Commit to a New Paper Reduction & Handling Process
• Go online and switch as many Bills, Receipts and Statements to Electronic from Paper delivery. Start with your Financial Institutions & Utilities.
• When paper does arrive, replace the time you spend “staging it physically” or filing it, with scanning and shredding it. You’ll be surprised how little time it takes.
2. Get a Good Scanner
• Scanning isn’t just for photos anymore, so slow flatbed scanners are becoming obsolete. There are amazing, affordable duplex (2-sided) scanners out there that cost in the $300- $500 and scan up to 50 page, 2 sided document in seconds. In my opinion, the “”Best of the Bunch is the Fujitsu ScanSnap series.
3. Get a Good Shredder
• Don’t be fooled into buying the cheapest product on the market. Motors and cutters tend to give out on those bargain units regularly (within a year). For less than $200 you can find a heavier duty shredder that shreds paper clips, staples, even credit cards & CD’s.
4. Establish or Get a Good Organized Filing System on your computer
• Investing the time in the setup of necessary files under MY Documents and your email Inbox is invaluable. There are also some very good time saving software programs that pre-build the folders you need or allow you to quickly build and index/search in the future. If you want a simple and easy to use solution, get the Electronic Filing Cabinet for Dummies, its simple, but it’s thorough and saves you hundreds of hours of setup time by installing all the pre-built folders you need in life which were created by industry experts. Click here to get a copy of a $75 software bundle for only $5 and support Earth Day in the process.
5. Backup, Backup, Backup
• While many options for backup exist, you should consider a safe, secure, online backup solution. For less than $50-100 per year per computer, you can employ a solution that automatically backs up all of your documents and your email when you’re online, without you having to do a thing. They are simple, painless and no disaster or catastrophe in the world can keep you from getting all your important files back, usually within 24 hours. Click here for one we recommend

Enjoy the Security and Peace of Mind
Once you have these basics in place, you’ll start to reap the benefits that come with going green…going paperless. It’s a winning way of doing business…a winning way of life. Let’s join together to Save Trees Not Paper™

To find out more and to download the Electronic Filing Cabinet for Dummies for just $5, simply click on this link today. www.org-matters.com/greystone