Reduce, reuse, recycle. Three little words that most everyone is familiar with. Like many other people, I feel that I do my part. I have a little recycling bin at home that I fill up each week and I carpool to work. However, I recently went and took a quiz on Earth Day Network’s website to tell me what my ecological footprint is. Yikes! To my surprise, my lifestyle is not as eco-friendly as I had hoped.

If everyone in the world were to live to my lifestyle, it would require 3.7 planets to sustain us. When I read further my footprint of 16 acres of biologically productive acres is actually less than the average footprint of 24 acres per person used by most Americans. Although I may be comforted by the fact that I am not as wasteful as many Americans, my 16 acres is still drastically more than the 4.5 per person that the world has to offer.

After the quiz, I was taken to a form that helps you set goals to reduce your footprint. The categories that are listed include food, mobility, and housing. That is great, but what about all the time that I spend at work each week. That was not even accounted for and it left me wondering what else I can do to help the community and our environment at work.

When Spunlogic recently took a step back and looked at how we stand as a company within the green movement and the global community, I was eager to participate. We identified many ways that we can improve as a company and I volunteered to lead up the recycling efforts. After all recycling is easy. It is such an easy and impactful way to help the environment, there should be no reason why anyone wouldn’t want to recycle. Well, so I thought.

There are many details that go into a recycling program, the biggest hurdle being logistics. What do you place the materials that you are recycling in? Where do you place the collection bins in the office? Who will take the materials to the recycling centers? Do you use volunteers or do you pay a service to empty the bins? How often do the recycling bins need to be emptied? Where are the recycling centers located? What type of materials does each recycling center accept?

I am happy to announce that Spunlogic is now recycling paper. After much research, I discovered that our building offers a service that provides bins and collects them at your request. In one day, the bins were placed in our office and we officially started the Spunlogic recycling program. It’s so convenient, but we never utilized the service before because it was not publicized or even known by many of the building’s tenants.

The main point is that while recycling and many other green efforts are easy to do, they do require some thought and effort. I challenge everyone to think of just one thing that you can do differently. No matter how large or small, I would love to hear what your personal or company goal is.

Next on the agenda for the Spunlogic recycling team: aluminum and plastic!