CAM Business Solutions is an award-winning IT and business solutions company. We go green in every way we can. We encourage our staff to commute to and from work via the Metro, carpool, and/or bike (or by any other Earth-friendly means). We save power and paper. Our offices are structured in such a way that we use less wiring, and use as few electronics as possible, including using one central printer that all computers are networked to. We save paper by printing only when absolutely necessary. - CAM is now proud to be able to offer clients electronic waste recycling through our Recycle/Reuse program. Contact CAM at info@cambusinesssolutions.com or 866-500-7878 for more information about how to recycle your office equipment, including computers, monitors, printers, telephones, and ink cartridges.

Office Recycling 101

Print & Toner Cartridges

Never throw a used print or toner cartridge away. These components can have multiple lives or be recycled. Many companies provide customers with prepaid postage labels to return cartridges for reuse and recycling. If unsure whether a cartridge can be recycled, check the company Web site or call the manufacturer.
Returned products are cleaned, inspected, and then remanufactured or recycled. Remanufactured cartridges, containing reused/recycled parts, are built and tested to the same performance specifications as new products.

PCs and Printers

Printers and computers can be recycled. Some pieces of electronic equipment must be returned to the manufacturer for recycling, while other machines can be recycled locally. For more information visit EIAE.org.

Paper

Most of the paper used in offices can be recycled including colored paper, newspapers, magazines, manila folders, post-it notes and envelopes.

Office Furniture

Several charities accept unwanted office furniture and recycle it for use by other businesses, organizations, school and charities.

Purchase Policy

The best way to encourage people to close the recycling loop is to develop purchasing policies and guidelines that specify products with recycled materials and that are produced in an environmentally friendly manner.

Entrepreneurs Saving The Planet

Entrepreneurial Small Businesses are Leapfrogging over Big Barriers to Environmental Progress

"Creative destruction" is the famous phrase that economist Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883-1950) used to describe the process by which entrepreneurs introduce innovations that force established businesses to adapt or die. This process benefits the economy by clearing out old growth to make room for the new.
Today "creative destruction" takes the form of a revolution that is supplanting large-scale, inefficient Industrial Era technologies with small-scale, efficient post-Industrial Era technologies. For example, look at how renewable energy systems that are clean, efficient and decentralized are challenging industrial era energy systems that are dirty, inefficient and bureaucratic. A great struggle is underway, but sooner or later, the new, superior technology is bound to triumph because it's more economical.
The agents of this revolution are the approximately 350,000 entrepreneurial small businesses in America that have been classified as gazelles -- the nickname applied to innovative, fast-growing small firms.
Many people don't realize the importance of gazelles to the environment. In fact, many gazelles are profiting by producing or using innovations that solve or reduce environmental problems and that dramatically increase efficiency and resource productivity. This makes them green gazelles and, cumulatively, their creative power is one of the planet's best hopes for survival.

Entrepreneurs Saving The Planet

FROM GREEN CRADLE TO GREEN GRAVE

An astonishing variety of "green lifestyle" businesses now enable an
individual to go through an entire lifetime in an environmentally beneficial way.
Some examples:
Say, you are a young person looking for a green date. Go to:
http://www.greensingles.com
To impress your date by looking good, you can dress green.
http://www.vivavi.com
If you fall in love and wish to marry, you can buy a green wedding ring.
http://www.brilliantearth.com
Then you can honeymoon in a green hotel.
http://www.greenhotels.com
You and your loving spouse can settle down in a green home.
http://www.greenhomebuilding.com
You can furnish your new home with green furniture.
http://www.sustainlane.com/article/454/157/Heal+Your+Home+with+
Nontoxic+Furniture.html?gclid=CN3P-Lma6ocCFQ13NAodBSivgQ
To pay for all this you can get a green job.
http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/jobs
Work hard and you can build an entire green career.
http://www.environmentalcareer.com
Now, you can afford to start a family. When you have a child you can
provide it a green nursery.
http://www.earthbaby.com
Naturally, you'll want your child to have a green education.
http://www.naage.org
Education costs a lot of money so it's a good thing you've been saving
money in a green bank.
http://www.eco-bank.com
By this time, you need a break from work. You can take a green vacation.
http://www.betterworldclub.com
When you can retire you join green seniors doing volunteer work.
http://www.landofsky.org/wrp
If you become ill you can go to a green hospital.
http://www.themha.org/hhe/greenhospitals.htm
And when you die you can be buried in a green cemetery
http://www.memorialecosystems.com

Five Reasons Why Small Business is the Best Source of Non-Bureaucratic Environmental Solutions

1. Small businesses are multitudinous, pervasive, and almost infinitely diverse - so are environmental problems. Small businesses fit environmental problems like a glove.
2. Small businesses are rooted locally. Often, they are on-site, exactly where environmental problems show up. Unlike big businesses, they cannot close down, leave town, and move elsewhere. Small business people are part and parcel of local communities, where they breathe the air, drink the water, and raise their children.
3. The decentralization of small businesses helps them devise environmental solutions that are non-bureaucratic, localized, and customized to fit their particular surroundings.
4. Small business people and entrepreneurs represent a huge talent pool filled with just the kind of drive, creativity, skills, and experience that's needed to produce non-bureaucratic environmental solutions. They think outside the box. They aren't afraid to take initiative and to run risks. They like to solve problems.
5. Society's best non-bureaucratic option for solving environmental problems is to increase efficiency and innovation. In these areas, small businesses and entrepreneurs have, traditionally, led the way, thanks to their intrinsic capacities for speed, responsiveness, flexibility, independence, and ingenuity.

Did You Know That ...

• Small businesses constitute one half of the nation's economy?
• Virtually all new jobs are created by fast-growing new small businesses?
• Two-thirds of all innovations come from small firms?
• One half of all commercial and industrial energy consumption is by small business?
• Small business is the best source of non-bureaucratic solutions to environmental problems?
• Thousands of small businesses are profiting from helping to protect and restore the environment?
• Entrepreneurs and small business innovators are dramatically increasing business efficiency and resource productivity, thus aiding the environment?
• Small businesses are laying the groundwork for a new economy that protects and restores the environment while it produces abundant growth and employment

Economic significance of green lifestyle businesses
Taken by itself, any one of these green businesses might appear to be
of trivial importance, but there are many, many others like these. Actually,
there are thousands of them and if they are looked at in their totality, the
effect is astonishing.
There's an organization that attempts to do precisely that. It's called Lifestyles
of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) and its website describes a $228.9 billion
U.S. marketplace for goods and services focused on health, the environment,
social justice, personal development and sustainable living.
Some specific examples: consuming organic products; alternative healthcare
(for example, acupuncture); personal development (for example, yoga, fitness,
weight loss); ecological lifestyles (for example, using ecological home and office
products; vacationing as eco-tourists).
The consumers attracted to this market have been collectively referred to as
Cultural Creatives and represent a sizable group in this country. Approximately
30 percent of the adults in the U.S., or 50 million people, are currently
considered LOHAS Consumers.

http://www.geocities.com/aboutcsbe/index.html

The Small Business Climate Initiative

Testing the Concept

To test the waters, CSBE is creating a model Small Business Climate Initiative in California.
Why California? The state is already leading in the effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions. And California's 3.3 million small businesses, which account for more than 90 percent of all businesses and employ more than 50 percent of all employees in the state, will be essential to tackling global warming.

Plus there's growing recognition that global warming will have serious adverse consequences on the economy and environment of the West Coast states. That's especially true in weather-influenced sectors such as energy, agriculture, and tourism, which – it so happens – is heavily populated by small firms.

To this end, we are collaborating closely with Small Business California, a non-profit, non-partisan advocacy organization. Small Business California did a survey in March 2006 and found the cost of energy to be one of the top issues for small business in California. To view the complete survey, go to www.smallbusinesscalifornia.org.
How to make this happen? We are asking the state government to:

• Issue a declaration by the governor that the state's climate change action plan will add a major focus on small business;
• Designate someone in the office of the state's climate change initiative as the small business outreach person.
• Devote some research funds to (a) the adverse impacts of global warming on small businesses and (b) the economic benefits that small businesses can garner by engaging in the transition to a clean and efficient economy;
• Add at least one small business representative to the advisory committee for the state's climate change initiative

GOING NATIONAL

The ultimate point of this endeavor is to extend the model developed in California throughout the country as soon as possible. Similar Small Business Climate Initiatives will be launched elsewhere by the Center for Small Business and the Environment.

ABOUT AB 32 -
THE CALIFORNIA GLOBAL WARMING SOLUTIONS ACT

On August 31, 2006, the California Assembly voted to pass the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) and on September 27, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the bill into law.
AB 32 is the first piece of legislation in the United States to place a mandatory cap on global warming pollution from stationary sources. Thus, California is now positioned to become the global market-leader in clean technologies.
This is the toughest legislation in the United States to tackle global warming. It is truly historic. What's also historic is that for the first time small business played an important role in this. In fact, Small Business California was the first statewide business organization to publicly support this bill.

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The Ugly Truth About Trash

The next time you begin your wind-up to lob that empty toner or ink cartridge in the trash, stop and think. Most cartridges are thrown away after one use even though they can be refilled. According to the Cartridge World North America, 300 million cartridges end up in landfills each year. This is anticipated to increase at a rate of 12 percent each year, so by 2015 the U.S. should be looking at nearly 100 million cartridges ending up in landfills. With the average toner cartridge weighing 3.5 to 4.5 lbs, by 2015 we would be adding between 1.7 and 2.2 million tons of waste accumulated.

Not all printers are alike when it comes to the amount of waste generated. Compared to traditional laser printers, Xerox's solid ink printers create 90 percent less consumables waste. After 100,000 prints, a solid ink printer produces only five pounds of waste compared to a color laser, which can produce 157 pounds.

Small steps really do make a difference. Estimates by industry research firms Gartner and IDC indicate that more than 8.5 million printers have been shipped between 2002 and 2006. A single laser cartridge thrown into landfill from just one of those printers can take up to 450 years to decompose. By incorporating procedures to reduce, reuse and recycle, offices of any size can help improve the health of the environment one step at a time.