In case you hadn’t heard, the Amazon rainforest is burning.

You may be wondering, “why is an outsourced IT company telling me this?” which is a valid question.

 

Let me answer you with the famous 3 C’s:

Copy machines, Conference calls and Cold cuts

Got it? No? OK let’s elaborate.

Here are three ways you personally can immediately help save the rainforest:

1. Conference calls

Whilst we all love a good sit-down chat that’s face-to-face, technology is rendering such encounters increasingly unnecessary.

Think of all the time and energy you will save if you don’t need to fly somewhere, drive somewhere or even take public transport. Think how much happier, richer and healthier our forests will be if they are not subjugated to our polluting fumes.

Lately, my favourite conferencing technology has become Microsoft Teams.

If you dismissed this cool, new feature of the Office 365 suite as being inferior to Skype which you were already using, then you may be surprised to hear:

• Teams allows external conferencing with third party access. In other words, you don’t need to have a Microsoft licence or install a special application to join the call.
• Teams fits easily into your existing workflow… assuming you use outlook or Microsoft emails rather than Gmail. The scheduled call will magically appear in your Outlook calendar.
• Every call includes a chat function and screensharing capability. This makes sharing information easy and presenting a piece of cake.

2. Copy machines

More conventionally known as printers, scanners or multi-function printers. No office is seemingly complete without one and our engineers will happily help you with yours.

However, how much do we really need them these days?

I am personally guilty of printing out presentations that I could otherwise screenshare or email.

You may not think that your own personal actions make any impact in the grand scheme of things but this is where you would be wrong.

Try these small changes for size:

1. Change the default printer settings to “double-sided”
2. Change the access policy so that only critical functions like accounting can use printers
3. Limit each user’s printing credits

Here’s why it’s important:

Over seventy-eight percent of the Earth’s original old growth forests have already been logged or degraded.

Logging companies are cutting down some of the most endangered forests on the planet to make wood and paper products such as office paper, phone books & toilet paper.

3. Cold cuts

Now this one is really not so much about IT and more about the fact that we’re headquartered in Hong Kong, and it’s about beef.

Significant proportions of the rainforests have been cleared, in part to raise cattle whose meat is exported for the international food industry.

According to this recent CNN article, Hong Kong is the main recipient of beef exported from Brazil.

By reducing your consumption of beef, we can cut this demand and thereby reduce pressure to clear more forests for cattle.