BERLIN — McDonald’s is going green — swapping its traditional red backdrop for a deep hunter green — to promote a more eco-friendly image in Europe….Read More

Head over to businessgreen.com where they have posted a video on how to safely dispose of IT equipment in an environmentally responsible manner.

http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/video/2251118/businessgreen-com-top-tips

Fax is still a widely used component in many companies however with the efficiency and speed of Email you could opt for one of the following providers to give you an e-fax number and receive all your fax electronically as an email attachment.

1.  Efax.com – eFax is an online fax service that eliminates the need for a fax machine, an extra telephone line and all the associated expenses (paper, ink cartridges etc). Get a real fax number that’s tied to your email. Send and receive faxes as email attachments. Enjoy the reliability and security of faxing with the ease and convenience of email.

These guys offer a monthly fee of £7.50 per month with the first 30 days free. This includes 130 received pages per month. After that incoming pages start at £0.12 per fax.

2. Myfax.com -MyFax® is the fastest growing Internet fax service used by individuals, small, medium and large businesses to send and receive faxes using existing email accounts or the web. MyFax offers services in North America, Europe and the UK to industries recognized among the fastest growing adopters of Internet fax including finance, insurance, real estate, healthcare, transportation and government. More than 15,000 new customers subscribe to MyFax each month.

Also offering a free 30 day trial and a monthly rate of $10 with 300 fax pages every month.

3. Rapidfax.com – RapidFAX combines the utility of fax with the ease of email to meet the needs of the small office and home office. RapidFAX was an early pioneer of online fax services and a company that now serves tens of thousands of customers online faxing needs every day. We are committed to providing online fax services that not only helps preserve the environment by saving paper, but also save you time and money.

Virtualisation in a nutshell is a way of maximising a servers resources by installing multiple operating systems / server software on one machine.

Scenario
You have one expensive server only running at 40% utilisation – why pay thousands of pounds for a brand new expensive server when you can get software to create a virtual instance of another server for a fraction of the cost. All big companies are offering virtualisation hardware and software. You only have to Google:  IBM, HP or DELL to read about their solutions and explanations to know it is making inroads in the IT world also it is Green as you are reducing emissions in server farms.

Additionally there are software packages available for home user and workstation PCs. You could use the software to create a virtual instance of say Windows 7 for testing purposes before actually installing it as your main operating system.

If your thinking of adopting this technology then consider turning to market leaders Parallel or VMware

If you are still slightly confused but appreciate virtualisation could be a viable option for your server requirements do not hesitate to email me over at jvaughan@greenscout.co.uk I will be more then happy to answer your questions and put you in contact with one of our preferred IT partners.

You may of seen an earlier post about an excellent green printing tool called green print (click here for the article)

I have managed to find an interesting apps geared towards monitoring energy usage levels on your home PC and therefore allowing you to becoming super energy efficient. Might be worth a look if you have got 5 minutes to spare.

Edison

Company Background: Verdiem provides enterprise software solutions to reduce energy consumption of PC networks.

Edison is a free app available for both Windows XP and Windows Vista. Edison enables you to monitor your PC’s power usage, reduce the amount of energy you waste, save on energy costs, and help preserve the environment.

The great feature I loved about Edison was that it tells you how much you will save in a year based on your settings and price per kwh.

This is definitely a worthwhile app to allow you to evaluate and reduce your energy I had no trouble installing and running it. However what with the Green IT boom except a larger corporation such as Microsoft or IBM to include a more heavyweight power management tool  that is compatible with XP, Vista and Windows 7. For now however why not give it a try – download here

Also for organisations with hundreds of PC’s having this installed on every machine could allow for some substantial savings.

I dont know much about vending machines but one of my good friends runs a vending company and this is apparently one of the better energy efficient machines on the market. See below for green techspecs.

• Low-energy, long-life LED lighting with over 50,000 hours mean no-more fluorescent light tubes to replace
• Use of recycled materials wherever possible including ‘tear-drop’ plastic moulding
• H20’s flash cooling system means power is only consumed when a water selection is made – no more permanent refrigerated tanks or gas compressors consuming electricity 24 hours a day
• All machines delivered in re-useable cases; packaging-free in the UK manufacturing means shorter logistic paths resulting in a reduced carbon footprint
• Extra-large water filters
• Use your own cups, bottle or jugs and reduce waste, packaging, and ultimately; cost
• No need for bottled water deliveries reducing associated service costs and carbon emissions

To enquire about this product or other vending machines to meet your office requirement contact the guys over at http://www.westomatic.com

Primarily for small business owners this web 2.0 invoicing software allows you to do all your billing via the web reducing the need to print out invoices and distribute them by post as this can be done via email. All you need is the internet and a good web browser to get started anything but IE then

Features include

• Create Estimates & Invoices
• Track Your Payments
• Schedule Automatic Invoices
• Manage Client Profiles
• Allow Unlimited Users
• Customize All Settings

The ‘Dirt’ trial includes 5 free invoices to send and then prices starting at 0.50c per invoice. Or starting from $15 a month you can pay for 50 invoices, once you are happy with the service why not upgrade to the unlimited package for $60.  I suspect more and more e-billing companies will be featuring on this site in the coming months. Buzz me if you know any more or have used greenerbilling to great effect.

Click here to claim your 5 Free Invoices via E-mail
Simple Invoicing! Start Now.

For businesses that require the services of a removal firm we have compiled a list in no particular order of 5 widely known eco-friendly removal companies in the South of England area.

1. http://www.ecovanandman.com – Based in South West London they use only low emission fully electric and LPG vans. Additional services include storage from £16.50 a week and packing materials which you can order online.

2. http://www.greenplanetlogistics.com – A firm from North London who claim they “pick up and travel to any UK postcode and have a selection of vehicles within our fleet to enable us to cater for any size job” additionally they won’t use a large vehicle unless absolutely necessary. They also claim to travel the quickest most fuel efficient routes cutting out the possibility of ‘dead mileage’.

3. http://www.transport4anything.co.uk/ – An excellent concept that reduces the amount of lorries and vans on the road with half full containers.  You simply list your job i.e transport of furniture and wait for a courier to contact you who is able to transport your goods. The website is free to post a listing and by using vans already on the road prices are low. Visit the website for a quote

4. http://www.greenvanhire.co.uk – Located in Brighton and with rates starting at £45 a day for a standard transit van that guzzles on biodiesel fuel for breakfast. The website contains some excellent tips on economical driving and they claim to have saved 1895.51kg of pollution in the month of August alone! and if your considering buying a new bedroom from Ikea they will collect your goods and deliver them.

5. http://www.greenmanandvan.co.uk – London and Brighton based removals start at £30 per hour but they offer a special rate of £22 for charities. They are very green – website is hosted on a solar powered server and they only use ethically sourced paper and bio-ink for their printing requirements.

I am sure there are much more of these companies throughout the world and more and more will keep popping up as time goes on. If you have used any of these removal companies or can recommend some more who provided an excellent service feel free to discuss in the comments

London, New York , Madrid – they are all investigating and implementing ways to become smarter cities.  Anthony Eskinazi has hit the nail on the head with regard to the the parking sector. His online startup Parkatmyhouse allows you to rent parking spaces throughout the U.K from homeowners who do not use the space and want to earn some monthly revenue.

A classic scenario being you have a season ticket for Arsenal or Chelsea; you could arrange to rent a parking space on match days for a nominal fee. If this type of service takes off then this may reduce the amount of cars driving around cities trying to find a space, whether this makes a significant difference is debatable however at least major towns and cities can utilise available spaces provided homeowners begin to rent their unused spaces out.

Rent a Parking Space with ParkatmyHouse.com

The first post kicks off with an excellent piece of software that many large organisation can benefit from:  GreenPrint

Every office wastes countless amounts of paper on drafts, duplicate prints, and wrong document printouts. The Greenprint software utility  can identify blank pages or pages with only a short amount of text from large documents and identify whether printouts are required. The developers claim they can reduce printing by 17% and save you $100 a year.

Greenprint can be downloaded for free for use at home, at schools and for non-profit organisations, or a $29 version can be purchased that is advertising free and can be used in small offices. An enterprise edition is also available for larger organisations

The software is compatible with the following operating systems:

Windows XP SP2, 32-bit & 64-bit
Windows Vista, 32-bit & 64-bit
Windows 7, 32-bit & 64-bit

 If you are concerned about paper management in your organisation then this is definately worth a look. Head over to Printgreener