I recently read the following:

“America is the queen of trash. Every day in the U.S., we produce enough trash to equal the weight of the Empire State Building. We throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour, produce enough styrofoam cups annually to circle the earth 436 times and trash enough office paper to build a 12-foot wall from Los Angeles to New York City.”

This is just one of the many startling facts that is prompting churches, nonprofits and associations to actively “go green”. Online collaboration software can help your organization reverse these statistics.  Here are 5 things your organization can do with online technology to start your “greening” process:

• Online File Sharing – reduce the amount of paper used for newsletters, copies,  handbooks and other important documents.  Also, quickly get new members up and running with all necessary documents stored in files.

• Online Discussions – reduce the amount of gas and travel time (and styrofoam coffee cups) it takes to attend meetings and collaborate on topics and instead use efficient online discussions with mailing list software for example.

• Simple Sign-ups – reduce the amount of paper (time and confusion) when using online tools for simple sign-ups.  MemberHub has a Whiteboards feature that can help for upcoming holiday parties, volunteer sign ups, upcoming events, etc.

• Quick Announcements – send out announcements via text message and/or email to members to reduce the amount of paper made for flyers, newsletters, postage, etc.  Also, send messages for last minute reminders, room changes, cancellations to reduce unnecessary drive time and/or gas!

• Photo Album Sharing – reduce the number of photos by sharing pictures online.  Print only the ones you want to keep in an album.

You can find other startling statistics here as well as check out National Geographic’s Green Tips.

So what is your organization doing to go GREEN?

Almost everything in your life can be digital now. It’s quite amazing actually. As a family we rarely print pictures any more. Even the ones that we want to share get loaded onto a digital picture frame and proudly displayed in the middle of our house. I figure we’re saving a lot of trees; considering how many pictures we take of our 2 year old.

As true as this is for most folks, there are still a bunch of organizations that haven’t gone “digital”. One of them that is trying is the pre-school that my daughter is in. These teachers and coordinators pour their lives into these children. They teach them to pray before meals, teach them manners, how to act socially around other children, and there are endless games and crafts that help develop our children physically and spiritually. But they definitely go through lots of paper.

Sure craft-time causes them to use construction paper like it’s going out of style, but it’s much more than that. The entire parent directory, which changes drastically every year is printed and bound. There aren’t many days that go by that an announcement is sent home on  pink or green sheet of paper. There is one teacher that even burns cd’s for each parent with pictures of the kids. The photos are named by each kid and sorted appropriately. I’m thinking pre-school programs could be quite the market for MemberHub.

Here are 5 ways that pre-schools and teachers can save money and trees by using online group communication tools:

1. Allow parents to share and maintain their profile information online
2. Send announcements via email and text messaging
3. Upload all files, forms and parent tips into a common area; online
4. Share photos online
5. Encourage parents to share ideas, ask questions and generally connect online

Certainly this is just the beginning of the list. Can you think of any more? If you’re a pre-school or elementary teacher or a parent of young children in these programs I’d love for you to leave a comment and share more ideas below.