10 quick ways to be greener at work

Okay. no major lifestyle changes...these are 10 quick and easy ways to go greener at your company or home office. Each takes less than 15 minutes!

Tomorrow, 10 more for the house and car.

1) Instead of ordering printed business forms, get your business forms, employee forms and HR information online from sites like G.Neil.com, which offers lots of printable stuff like printable state-specific job applications. Time to make change: 5 minutes

2) Set your office computers to go into sleep or hibernate after hours, and use Wake on LAN to allow after-hours updates and remote access without wasting energy. Time to make change: 10 minutes

3) Next time you shop for breakroom supplies, replace the foam plates and cups in the lunch rooms with recycled/recycable paper and provide a recycle bin. Better yet, encourage people to bring their own mug and provide bio-safe dish soap. Time to make change: 5 minutes

4) Replace paper memos with electronic ones. Ban paper ones, ban printing the electronic ones. (Make the penalty for violation funny...like having to wear the paper memos pinned to one's shirt for the day!) Time to make change: 1 minute and some good laughs as people adjust to the new rules

5) Take out 10 light bulbs in your office and replace them with high-efficiency green light bulbs. Time to make change: 10 minutes, assuming no lawyers or other lightbulb joke participants are involved)

6) Install hand sanitizer stations in restrooms and breakrooms to reduce water and paper towel use. Time to make change: 10 minutes per station

7) Instead of placing a paper insert ad, spend 10 minutes a day promoting your company or product on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or other social sites and networks. Time to make change: 10 minutes per day

8) Replace the toxic cleaners in your offices with green, safe versions. Or better yet, mix your own natural cleaners from things like baking soda and vinegar. Time to make change: 15 minutes or less per product

9) Send out a green tip of the day to employees (via the Internet, NOT on paper!) Encourage employees to submit their own green ideas and lifestyle changes to include in your list of tips. Time to make the change: 5 minutes or less a day

10) Change your subscription on two professional journals, bills or order confirmations from paper to online only. Do this once a week until everything that can be paperless is paperless. Time to make the change: 10 minutes a week

There you go! 10 quick changes, each 15 minutes or less! Ready, set, green!

Green your computers with Wake on LAN

You want to save energy at your company and at home, but there are updates you need, remote access that's essential or data that needs to be accepted even during times when no one is around.

So do you leave the computer running, sucking up energy and waiting? Or do you miss out on the updates and access?

There is a third choice, and odds are it's already built into you computer. The process is called Wake on LAN. In plain English, it means that even if your computer is in energy-saving hibernate or sleep mode, it can wake up and accept data or allow access even when no one is around to press a button.

There's a complete step-by-step of the process on Lifehacker, but basically it's as simple as making a few tweaks in your computer's BIOS settings, then changes the settings in the Device Manager to allow your computer to utilize the new BIOS.

Best of all, after your computer has stretched its virtual arms and accepted your remote access or incoming data, you can tell it to go back to sleep (or into hibernate) again until the next update.

A free PsShutdown tool from Microsoft SysInternals can be used to script automatic standby after each use.

The whole process will take less than 10 minutes to install, but the energy savings, especially for a large company running PC's at every desk can be enormous. Who said becomig a greener business was hard?