Download your free white paper by clicking on the link below.

Reducing paper use at work is one of the easiest ways to go green while cutting costs, and sometimes even improving productivity.

• Use printer paper more efficiently. This goes beyond vaguely asking co-workers to print fewer documents. Check your company's default margins, fonts and letterhead to see if space can be saved without sacrificing readability. Encourage printing on both sides and, if only one side has been used, save the paper for rough work or printing draft copies.
  
  
• Improve online collaboration. You won't have to ask people to print less if the act already feels redundant. Try a platform such as Microsoft's SkyDrive that allows team members to share, edit and discuss documents online with ease.
  
  
• Hold paperless meetings. Most people throw away agendas as soon as the meeting is over, so present them to the group at the beginning instead of printing out a copy for everyone. Having a designated note taker frees everyone else to focus on contributing to the meeting while also saving paper. The notes can be put into a common online workspace so that any of the team members can edit or refer to the notes later on.
  
  
• Get an eFax address. Even if you have moved firmly into the digital age, some companies that you do business with may be lagging behind. An eFax address will allow you to send and receive faxes as digital images, reducing wasted paper at your end and streamlining your communications in the process.
  
  
• Reduce junk mail. Contact an environmental organisation that specialises in reducing junk mail, reducing the paper in your office while saving you the hassle of throwing it away.
  
  
• Try a Tablet PC. You can write notes on it as you go and record meetings for later playback alongside your notes. With an HP EliteBook 2740p and Microsoft OneNote, you won’t need a paper notebook again.

Energy-efficient power supplies

Choose a system configuration with an energy efficient power supply. Energy efficient power supplies reduce energy consumption, provide peak reduction and provide improved power quality. For example, HP Notebook power supplies sense when they are not actually charging a laptop and automatically cut back on their energy consumption.

Calculate your carbon footprint

Get a baseline cost and estimate the cost savings and CO2 reductions of switching to a more energy-efficient notebook with the HP Carbon Footprint Calculator.

HP QuickWeb gets you online faster

Push the HP QuickWeb button to gain fast access to email, the Internet, your calendar and contacts without booting your PC. Personalise the interface with your favourite newsfeeds, weather and more to quickly see the information you need.

Optional SSD drives

When you replace conventional hard disk storage with solid state drives (SSDs) not only do you save energy but your laptop is more responsive, for example cutting the time it takes to ‘wake up’. This makes it easier to leave the laptop in an energy-efficient standby mode.

PC Advisor just reviewed the HP Z1 all-in-one workstation (See my own video review on YouTube) and found much to like, giving it 4.5 stars out of a possible 5. Here are some of the highlights:

"The HP Z1 is the most attractive, most powerful, and most expensive all-in-one PC we've ever seen. ... I'll just go ahead and say it: This machine is, hands down, the most powerful all-in-one PC we've ever tested. ... The HP Z1 is housed in a gorgeous, if large, all-in-one chassis."

Read the full review online.

Bruno Zago, Hewlett Packard Environmental Manager for the UK & I talks to Matthew Stibbe about the attitude of business towards the environment and what SMBs can do to save money and be greener in their business practices. 

For more information and to ask any questions to Bruno, visit the HP Business Answers LInkedIn group http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=3692681

This is a guest post by Bruno Zago, UK&I Environmental Manager at HP

For us recycling and environmental innovation are very important. It’s important because we’re a big player in the market: we ship two PCs a second and 110,000 printers a day. Every gram of CO2 we can save and every bit of material we can recycle is multiplied up by these vast quantities.

We take it seriously. For example:

• We recycled about 900,000 tonnes of electronic products and supplies by the end of 2010
• We removed all mercury from HP’s entire notebook line last year
• We have reduced the energy consumption of HP products and associated greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 2005 levels.
• We are on track to achieve our goal of phasing out BFR and PVC in newly-introduced computers and, in fact, all our new notebooks are already BFR and PVC-free.

We concentrate on minimising the amount of materials in our products and our packaging. Making things smaller, using less materials  and lighter. It’s about shrinking the footprint of the product. People don’t like polystyrene so we’re starting to move products away from that to moulded pulp.

Read more on the HP Environment site.