Did you know you can go GREEN without changing a thing in your house. Once you have replaced the lights in your home with CFL's these tips will help you further reduce your Carbon Foot Print and help you save a little green at the same time.
Did you know?
- The average household receives 20 bills per month - so a typical family can save almost $100 per year in postage alone by going online to pay bills.
Statistic, NACHA, The Electronic Payments Association - If all U.S. households viewed their statements and paid their bills online it would save 2.3 million tons of wood or 16.5 million trees!
Source: Javelin Strategy & Research, 2007
- One large tree can provide a day's worth of oxygen for up to four people.
Source: Tree Canada Foundation
Green Tip #1 - Get rid of those annoying bills and statements from your mail box.
Many companies now allow you to receive your statement online and via email. This one is a big green savings that doesn't cost you a thing and really helps reduce oil dependency and our environment. Less mail means smaller trucks and lighter loads which translates into lower emissions and less fuel.
Green Tip #2 - Pay your bills online or by phone
Save time, money and gas by paying your bills online or by phone. I use a combination of online bill pay options including MSN Bill Pay (MSN.com), my bank's bill pay, and my vendors online payment process. I am less keen on bank bill pay services and only use them when I am paying a credit card or bank loan from that institution. They tend to grab the money first then pay the bill later - a way to keep from paying you interest. The biggest savings is when you pay direct to the vendor cutting out all fees. I like MSN bill pay because they do not take the money from my account until the day I tell them to deliver the payment, even if the payment is by mail.
A word of caution with online bill pay and pay by phone. Some companies, especially credit card and finance companies, charge hefty fees when you pay by phone or pay online. If the company charges a hefty fee for this service, then use your bill pay service. Most companies that offer this service want to get your payment on time and do not charge a fee.
Green Tip #3 - Archiving your statements
Many companies now allow you to view your statements for a year or more online. But as we know the government forces us to keep them longer. Once you get your statements online it will be important to archive them for future reference. Printing them and storing them defeats the purpose of having your vendor offer them online. I use a service called Carbonite (carbonite.com) to back up all of my pc files including my documents. You can do this for less using backup program like Norton Ghost or copy them to USB Jump Drive, CD/rw or DVD/rw. Your local office supply can help you with backup technology. There are also online services popping up that will accept your documents as well as your photos. Use caution with placing your personal information on a free site for two reasons, first security and second these companies seem to fold quickly when the law knocks on their door and they are more than happy to hand over your personal information which is stored on their servers without asking.
Just a note from the geek in me. If you are not backing up your computer you are leaving yourself wide open to loss, regardless how you pay your bills. Everyone is concerned about losing photos and other important documents by way of fire and other natural disaster and they do not realize they are more vulnerable to loss because a little mechanical storage device failed without notice or warning.
Don't worry you won't put your friendly mail carrier out of a job. Everything can not be processed this way and there is always that non-green junk mail. What you will do is lighten the load which will take less fuel to deliver and more important save a few trees which will help our planet process the emissions that are produced.
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