How to Be a Green Insurance Agent
Will being green help you be a better insurance agent? I wouldn’t go that far, but reducing your carbon footprint may send positive signals to both your clients and potential employees: "You want to be seen as a leader and not a laggard," green consultant Nik Kaestner told PC Magazine recently (that’s PC for personal computer, not politically correct). If prospects sense a forward-thinking bent in your day-to-day activities, they’re more apt to trust that you’ll do right by them down the road.
Turn off your computer each night.
You may think this is a negligible move, but consider that appliances that are on standby are still sucking electricity, anywhere from five to 60 watts. Now consider an entire office full of appliances on standby every night, 365 days a year. Now we’re talking significant energy usage, none of which goes toward getting things done or making money.
Print only necessary documents.
Even if you recycle your already recycled paper, you’re still drawing energy with every Ctrl+P. (Think about what happens to the paper in the recycle bin: its reincarnation is just beginning.) And the by-product of that energy, CO2 emissions from power plants, contributes to global climate change. And then there’s the part in which forests are leveled to sate our need to print silly forwards from uncle Bob. Forests absorb CO2, so without them, more of our emissions go into the atmosphere and contribute to global climate change.
According to Reduce.org, a site run by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, “Americans throw away enough office paper each year to build a 12-foot high wall stretching from New York to San Francisco.” That’s 10,000 or so sheets, or 20 reams, per person, per year. Scary, huh?
In the insurance world, more than other industries, paper is a necessary evil, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to cut down. Print sparingly, and use both sides of the paper when you can.
Reconsider your commute.
You can drastically reduce your carbon footprint by altering your commute. Most of us drive only ourselves to work, an expensive and inefficient way to travel.
According to Stanford University’s Commute Cost and Carbon Emissions Calculator, a person who has a 20-mile round-trip commute and drives a car that gets 20 miles per gallon can save 3944 lbs of CO2 by not driving solo.
If altruism isn’t your thing, consider that that same 20-mile commute will cost you, based on AAA’s estimates of the hidden and real costs of owning a car, a whopping $2,630.88 a year.
And if you work for yourself, you’ve got an even bigger incentive: according to a recent article in Time Magazine, “congestion created by people getting to and from work costs U.S. employers 3.7 billion hours of lost productivity a year, which adds up to $63.1 billion in wasted time and fuel every year.”
Comments
If you really want to save energy you could suppliment google with blackle. It gives you the same results google would and, according to their "about" page, by using a black background your computer uses less energy than if your browser had to display the standard "white" Google background. baby steps =)
Posted by: Aaron Wallrich | August 31, 2007 02:34 PM
Great tip, Aaron! Every step, big or small, is worthwhile.
Posted by: Jeb | September 4, 2007 07:48 AM
Aaron: I have to take exception to your suggesting the using of a 'black background'. Not only are an estimated 20% of the general public unable to read what is 'reversed type' but a majority of the rest, take longer to read it. Also the reverse is true. The black type causes an increase in heat and energy output. Thus nothing is gained. Nature, not man, is the greater influence as to energy.
Posted by: JP Drengler | October 4, 2007 06:34 PM