Reduce Your Business’s Carbon Footprint With Conference Calls

by Mike Stanford

When it comes to reducing your carbon footprint, there are a great number of common sense methods which can help reduce your personal burden on the environment, from buying perennial fruit and vegetables over annual, to using cold water when washing clothes or dishes. But when you run a business, finding simple ways to develop a sustainable business model might not be so readily apparent, particularly if you run a large business with offices in several countries.

So where do you start? Well, depending on how far down the rabbit hole you wish to go, it’s best to start with a full energy audit. This can be as simple as making a note of all wasteful energy-consuming devices in your office, from computers in stand-by mode, to water-coolers left chilling overnight; or as complex as working out the carbon cost of your company assets and raw materials.

However, it’s the little things that are both the easiest to act upon, and can often reduce your carbon footprint a surprising amount. Take effective and efficient communications, for example – something every business strives for. Here, there’s a solution that is cost-effective, time-efficient and incredibly green compared to the alternatives.

Does your staff travel to meetings, even going so far as to fly to other countries for an hour’s meeting? Sure, sometimes this is an unavoidable expense, especially when meeting clients or stakeholders for the first time. But take a single first class round-trip to London from New York, which clocks in at 4 tonnes of carbon emissions. Now look at the carbon cost of a conference call: 57g per participant per minute.

So even if you make an hour’s worth of  conference calls every day for an entire year between three people, you’re only looking at 2.7 tonnes of emissions, a fraction of the 19 tonnes each person in the US is responsible for (8.73 tonnes in the UK). With one in five employees (in the US at least) now taking 3.9 business trips per year, even switching one of those trips to a conference call represents a huge saving in carbon. Conferencing calling: the easiest way for businesses to go green.

Simply put, the answer is "Yes". You can create dangerous smog levels in your own home with an ozone-generating air purifier. The finding comes from a study of ozone-emitting air purifiers by Sergey A. Nizkorodov, PhD, from the University of California, Irvine. There researchers studied 13 air purifiers known to give off small and large amounts of ozone, a major ingredient in air pollution.

Several ionic air purifiers made by The Sharper Image, including the popular Ionic Breeze Quadra, which produce detectable levels of ozone. But they did not emit dangerous levels of ozone, except when a Quadra model intended for a large room was tested in a tiny bathroom.

Ozone generators, however, were a different story. As they are designed to do, they put a lot of ozone into indoor spaces. The devices quickly caused ozone build-ups to levels that can trigger severe smog alerts for outdoor air.

This becomes problematic as exposure to ozone irritates and inflames the lining of the respiratory system, and causes symptoms such as coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath. Ozone can also worsen asthma symptoms, with one study indicating that ozone may contribute to the development of asthma itself.

The dangers of ozone continue as elevated exposure can cause permanent lung damage, and repeated exposure can be potentially fatal among people with ailing health. People especially vulnerable to ozone hazards include children and those who suffer from asthma or other respiratory diseases, including the elderly.

Ozone Generators vs. Ionic Air Purifiers

Ionizing air purifiers, because of their electric charge, do create ozone. Consumer Reports has warned that they may give off potentially harmful ozone levels.

Mark Connelly, senior director of appliances and home improvement for Consumer Reports, oversees the magazine's air-cleaner tests.

"You don't want to say that anything that generates ozone is bad," Connelly tells WebMD. "A printer produces ozone, but just because printers sit on people's desks doesn't mean they should be taken off the market. But the people who buy air purifiers are most susceptible to the problems they create. You buy it to make things better, and it ends up making things worse for you."

Whatever ozone comes from ionic air purifiers pales in comparison to the amount produced by ozone-generating air purifiers. These machines make ozone for one reason, and that being that that's what they are designed to do.

"Ozone is a very effective way of disinfecting water - and some believe it is also possible to do this in the air," Nizkorodov says. "Unfortunately, at the concentrations you need to destroy germs and pollutants, the ozone levels are so high you cannot safely use it."

In a small bathroom, the UCI researchers found that one ozone generator, the EZ-COM Air Purifier, took only a half hour to build up ozone to a smog level that would force school closings if detected in a city's air. In a 1,250-square-foot office, the device took about a half hour to build ozone to smog levels that would trigger unsafe air alerts.

However, studies show lower level of air purifiers is relatively safe, but still not ideal as they don't actually purify the air.  The next question becomes: how effective are air ionizers over air filters.

Ionic Air Purifiers vs. Air Purifiers

Ionizers simply get rid of the charge in a dust particle so that they stick to surface rather than linger through the air. However indoor air purifiers have the ability to actually eliminate odors though a carbon filter.

Ionic air purifiers only spit out negative ions that neutralizes oxidizers. As a result, dust becomes statically charged and sticks to a surface. However, ionic air purifiers cannot actually clean or filter the air.  On the other hand, air purifiers with HEPA filters and carbon activation can eliminate mold spores, odors, smoke, pet hair, and be used to treat allergies, asthma and provide a pristine indoor air quality for home, office, and medical uses.

If you want safe and EPA approved air cleaners, consider the BlueAir Air Filter, the AustinAir Air Cleaner, and the IQ Air Purifier. 

Summary of this week's top green technology news from around the web:

UK-based Siemens Mobility Traffic Solutions is re-inventing the traffic light.  By replacing the energy-inefficient tungsten-halogen lights by a cluster of LEDs, the company expects to reduce the energy usage to less than 25%  and maintenance costs as well.

A biofuel demonstration flight will take place today at Schiphol Airoprt in Amsterdam.  UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, created green jet fuel from renewable feedstocks.  Camelina, an inedible plant, was used to generate the biofuel.  This flight will be the first to carry observers and the first demonstration of its kind in Europe.

Masdar City may become the world's first city with zero carbon emissions and zero waste.  40,000 to 50,000 people are slated to live in this city conceived by Abu Dhabi.  15 billion in seed money has been put up for this venture.

American think-tanks have concluded that Asia is set to dominate the clean technology market.  China is duplicating the strategies employed by Japanese and Korean governments to establish a technological lead in other markets.  China is already the world's biggest exporter of solar power products and has one of the largest wind-power industries.

ZeaChem, a biofuel startup company, is building a pilot plant that will manufacture ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks using microbes found in termites.  Instead of using yeast to ferment the sugars into alcohol, the sugars are fed to a bacteria found within various insects including termites. This results in significantly higher yields than other production processes.

One of the world's largest brake pad manufacturers, FRAS-LE, is about to introduce a new environmentally-friendly hybrid material for use in friction applications such as brake pads.  The material doesn't contain chemicals such as asbestor, lead, mercury, lead, chromium, nickel, antimony or copper.  The material meets California's 2032 legislation, 22 years ahead of time.