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!

Not only is UPS one of the largest and most influential companies in the world (and one of our favorite clients), they are also very focused on helping save the environment in a variety of ways. I had a chance recently to ask Lynnette McIntire, the manager over their Corporate Reputation Management group, about their green efforts. She pointed me to the UPS Community website and the UPS Sustainability website, and was also kind enough to answer some of my questions.

Please explain the UPS green efforts from a high level.

We tackle environmental issues on a variety of fronts: our investments in alternative fuels for example. But probably the biggest area is the way we run our business - for example, drivers are taught not to leave the engine running at their stops; we aim to eliminate left turns because you are often stuck idle at intersections; our dispatch technology minimizes miles driven by optimizing the routes. At our airline, we have a fuel conservation manager who continually monitors fuel use and finds ways to reduce fuel and emissions. Last year, we reduced emissions by 6 percent through operational improvement.

We are very aware of the packaging we use and the recycling of electronics which are a big part of our business.

How/when did the initiative(s) begin?

Since fuel has always been a big part of our costs, we have always been conscious about fuel conservation. In fact, our first all-electric cars were in the 1930s!

UPS obviously has the ability to affect the world at large due to its overall size. How is the company measuring this impact, both internally and externally?

UPS’s modus operandi is to measure everything. And many of those measurements are reported in our annual sustainability report. That includes carbon footprint…we were one of the pioneers in this area when we started our report five years ago.

Our environmental key performance indicators (KPIS) include measurements of water consumption, energy footprint, ground network fuel efficiency, global aircraft emissions, noise standards requirements, and CO2 footprint.

What type of incentives or encouragement does UPS give to employees to contribute to the cause? And what efforts are they able to contribute towards (recycling, telecommuting, etc.)?

In our offices, we have motion-detecting lighting to shut of lights when rooms are unoccupied. Our computers are shut off automatically. There are incentives for carpooling. We also have very active volunteers in the community who work on parks restoration, tree plantings, and nature conservancy. Drivers right now are receiving communications to remind them of the importance of minimizing air conditioning and engine idling. We are now encouraging our customers to switch from paper bills to electronic bills as a way to reduce paper waste.

It’s the everyday things that can really add up.

Are there any opportunities UPS has found to partner with other companies or vendors?

Our alternative fuel fleet research is done with both the EPA and manufacturers. We have a “rolling laboratory” in that the alternative fleet is on the road and being tested in a demanding driving environment. This means that the manufacturers can tweak the vehicles to be more commercially-viable, which helps them and the transportation industry going forward. All that knowledge and experience gets introduced in the next generations of vehicles.

Spunlogic is going green! We’ve formed a team that will be responsible for helping to make the company more environmentally responsible. Our “Green Team” will be working on energy conservation, waste reduction, reuse and recycling, emissions reduction and water conservation.

Do you want to get more info on the Green Movement and/or how you can help on a personal level? Check out some of the following sites and blogs.

Green Web Sites:

• Green.Yahoo!
• Greenedia
• The Daily Green
• Be Green Now
• Lime.com
• Environmental Defense
• Conservation.org
• The Carbon Neutral Company

Green Blogs:

• Triple Pundit
• World Changing
• Treehugger
• Inhabitat
• Next Billion
• Grist.org
• Technorati’s List of Environmental Blogs