Building a Greener Green Tangerine Media

When we started Green Tangerine Media in the Fall of 2005 we were running two computers out of a 550 square foot space on a single power strip. Those two computers, along with an extremely slow printer were enough to “get by” with because our workload was much smaller back then. We took our calls on a single cell phone and leased web hosting from a Canadian company for $25 per year because no one really went to our website anyway.

Fast forward nearly three years later – Green Tangerine Media now operates out of three physical locations in two states and our network consists of over a dozen 2 to 8 core workstations, over 16 terabytes of hard drive storage, and all of the bells and whistles that go along with a mid-size network. Throughout our growth the same question has been on our minds – how do we expand and still stay green?

1. No more fax machines - Our client/project paperwork is now emailed to clients for signature and we encourage that it be returned to us that way. Elimination of physical paper copies for each project has not only reduced the amount of paper waste in our offices by 80%, it makes storage and retrieval substantially easier.

2. Environmentally sound computing - Each and every computer system in use at Green Tangerine Media must meet Energy Star requirements and, if possible, exceed them. This past summer we replaced every hard drive in every computer in use at Green Tangerine Media with GreenPower hard drives by Western Digital and nearly every desktop computer was replaced with an Energy Star compliant notebook computer. We use a lot of computer systems and we make sure that every one of them is powered down every night after work and that they’re as energy efficient as possible.

3. Transportation - Gas prices are at an all-time high just as environmental resilience to automobile traffic is at an all-time low. For our Seattle office, we are offering our new employees multiple incentives to encourage the use of bicycles or public transportation rather than commuting by car every day.

4. Training materials - Just this past month we’ve replaced our 2 dozen page website training manual with an online system. From here on out we’ll be offering live remote desktop training with one of our content management specialists in place of a printed manual. So far this approach has been so well received that we’re rather upset that we didn’t think of it sooner.

While there are still some areas we can all improve on, we’re definitely seeing savings in our overhead and hopefully in some small way we’re also making a difference to the environment. We pledge to continue to look for ways to cut down on waste within our company and we urge you to do the same. Our goal for 2009 is to migrate toward a completely paperless workplace, we’ve been headed that way for awhile now and we’re confident that we’ll get there within the next year.

Thank you for supporting our efforts to be a more environmentally aware company. We appreciate you taking the time to read up on what we’re doing here. Check back in March 2009 when we will be publishing a full report on our efforts.

Jennifer M.
Director of Client Relations
Green Tangerine Media

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