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After the holidays we don’t
need them anymore.

We need new workstations If we rent them, we don’t
for the holiday season rush. need to keep them or figure
out how to get rid of them.

Cooperative Buying
By participating in a cooperative buying program, you help reduce the amount of reusable
business waste going into landfills. It also reduces your disposal costs and allows you to
buy materials at a low price.

Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Plan
Your company should adopt an environmentally preferable purchasing plan. This establishes
environmentally conscious policies for the sorts of materials you buy. Some considerations
include the following:

• Paper Buy 35-percent to 100-percent post-consumer recycled paper. It used to be a PART III
specialty item that only niche suppliers carried, but now bigger brand-name retailers
such as Staples offer paper with up to 100-percent recycled content.
• Supplies Numerous business supplies, such as clipboards, binders, post-its,
folders, envelopes, notepads, notebooks, and calendars, can be purchased with
different percentages of recycled content. As with paper, many small and online
retailers offer a great variety of products. Again, these items can be found at Office
Depot and Staples.
• Paperless If you send faxes electronically and scan documents, you won’t
consume as much paper. Plus, it’ll be easier to locate documents you file. We’ll talk
about going paperless in more detail in Chapter 6.
• Janitorial Just because they’re used to clean up our messes doesn’t mean that
janitorial supplies have to be hazardous. Look for chlorine-free products that have
more than 35 percent post-consumer recycled content.
• Business cards Think about wherever paper is used in your organization—even
business cards can be bought that are printed on recycled paper.
• Food products If you stock Styrofoam cups, plastic silverware, and the like in
your break rooms, think about switching over to buy biodegradable/compostable
food service ware.

NOTE In San Francisco, food vendors are forbidden from using polystyrene foam and must use
biodegradable or recyclable materials.

• Bags Paper or plastic? Ditch the plastic bags and stick with paper bags. Plastic bags
are made of petroleum products and do not biodegrade and cannot be recycled.