Change the Margins

Environmental Defense Rocks My World

One of my biggest frustrations in working on this campaign has been in trying to find the right stats to pass along when people ask for help in taking the idea to their companies or schools. The internet is an amazing place, but as we all know, you can waste a TON o'time searching and searching and searching and still not finding exactly what you need.

Yesterday, I finally hit paydirt! I followed a link on the "Experts" section of  The 11th Hour website to Forest Ethics. After nosing around there for a bit, I found a report which mentioned a bunch of facts & figures, all credited to a paper calculator created by Environmental Defense.

It's an amazing tool that allows businesses and individuals to easily figure out the impact they could make by reducing various factors in their paper consumption. There are also a ton of reports from the initiatives the company has worked on, so I'll be spending some time with those this weekend mining them for facts and figures relevant to my own li'l project.

1st Company Adopts Margins!

I'm extremely excited to report news of the first company that has officially adopted Change the Margins! Christopher Lee, CEO of ACCESS Destination Services, recently emailed me with the following:

Just wanted to let you know that our company is on-board and we are spreading the word.  Believe me, there is a lot (too much) wasted paper in our industry, so it feels very good to be a part of bringing the waste down and doing something positive for the environment!

Below is a bit more about the company, which specializes in conference planning and implementation on the West Coast. I look forward to hearing more from ACCESS about how the campaign is progressing throughout their offices.

Established in 1970, ACCESS Destination Services sets the standard for excellence in destination management services.  The award-winning team at ACCESS provides creative program design, unique special event production, transportation logistics and recreational activities for corporate, incentive and association groups.  ACCESS has offices in San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles, Palm Springs and Las Vegas.  For more info. go to www.accessdmc.com.

 

 

 

 

All About the Numbers

One of the things I'm learning on my grassroots adventure is the importance of numbers and statistics. They're slippery little fellas! You need numbers - irrefutable numbers - to convince companies it's fiscally worth it to change corporate policy. And a lot of research has been done on the impact of the paper industry on the environment and on how using recycled paper will save trees, cut down on emissions, etc. However, these number are scattered across the cyber-universe in a rather unscientific manner, so trying to put them together in a comprehensive document that can stand up to scrutiny has been challenging. If anyone knows a statistician with some spare time on his/her hands, please send me their contact e-mail address!

What HAS been encouraging are the emails I've been receiving with suggestions and requests for more info to  spread the Margins idea around. I'm almost done with a sample letter that one can use to bring to their company supervisor or IT Department, and hope to have it posted within the next week...just trying to get the numbers to make sense (did I mention I'm having horrible flashbacks to my high school calculus class?).