This is especially true with electronics equipment since it’s usually not easy to find a place to recycle them. Throwing electronics in the trash isn’t the best choice since there are hundreds if not thousands of toxic substances contained in many electronics equipment that will be buried in the ground and leak into our water supply.

In fact, the first choice before recycling would be to donate the equipment if it’s still in working condition. Consider offering it to a local homeless shelter, Big Brothers or Goodwill. Offer it for free pickup on Craigslist.org or FreeCycle.org.

For example, in our community in Chandler, AZ, the local Whole Foods is having an Electronics Recycling even today. They’re even giving away free reusable shopping bags to the first 100 people that recycle.

You can find your local Whole Foods store by visiting WholeFoods.com and searching the events for your store. Each store in our area offers recycling on different dates.

You can also find companies and locations that offer electronics recycling in your area and nationwide at the EPA website.

To recycle your old cellphones, visit this site and search for your make and model. You may also get paid to send it in, depending on the model.

Keep it green!

Additionally there’s the fax machine paper usage. Did you know that:

• 210 billion sheets of paper are consumed by faxing in US companies every year.
• 12,500 sheets of paper can be made from 1 tree
• 10,000 sheets of paper per year are used by a single US office worker
• 95% of this paper will eventually be thrown away, not recycled.
• 4 trees per year are cut down to meet the fax requirements of an average US company.
• 17 million trees per year are cut down to supply fax paper for the US as a whole

So what’s the solution?

Email to fax service.

An online fax service makes it easy to send a fax to email as well as receive a fax by email. You can send a fax online using online fax software, print any document from your computer directly to a fax or send a fax by email, attaching it from any number of document types including MS Word, PDF, Excel and many others.

Online fax service is available from many vendors. You can compare the costs, features and benefits of email fax services here to see which fax to email solution makes the most sense for your situation.

In addition to the energy and cost savings of using an fax to email service is the convenience of receiving all your fax documents by email. If you travel or aren’t at the office, you can still get your fax by email at any computer with an internet connection.

By using online fax software, you not only save energy, but you also save paper by handling all the communication electronically. With most fax to email software, you can modify or annotate the incoming faxes you receive and send them right out again without needing to print, scan and fax again. Most services send your faxes in PDF format and can be stored efficiently on your hard drive or backed up on CD/DVD’s if you require archives. No paper needed!

And there’s the time savings. No more running back and forth from the fax machine, waiting for paper jams or other faxes to be received, waiting in line and then waiting for faxes to be delivered to your desk. How much time to do you waste with the office fax machine?

I liberated myself from my fax machine over 6 years ago and have found using an email to fax service easy, convenient, cost and energy efficient and just plain cool. To find a place to recycle your old fax machines, visit the EPA web site for organizations in your area.

Here’s to turning your office green!

In researching an alternative, I found YouRenew to be a good alternative. An advantage to YouRenew is that they also accept most other electronics including MP3 players, gaming devices, digital cameras, laptops and more.

Did you know that an estimated 130 million, or roughly 65,000 tons, of cell phones are retired every year in the United States?

This creates a major problem with wireless phone disposal since just throwing them into the trash creates hazardous e-waste, or hazardous electronic waste.

Wireless phones contain toxic materials such as lead and cadmium which are hazardous to our soil and water supply if just disposed into landfills. In addition to toxic metals, wireless phones contain plastic; precious metals; glass; and other materials.

So what do you do with your old cell phones?

Well first, don’t just throw them in the trash!

For several years, I’ve used a cell phone recycling company called Cell For Cash. They recycle used cell phones certifying they won’t end up in a landfill, causing damage to our water supply and environment. They recondition these phones and resell them in other markets, or recycle the parts through companies that specialize in recycling or re-using industrial by-products or materials that contain precious metals, like cell phones.

The interesting part about Cell For Cash is that they’ll pay you to recycle your old cell phone. The process is straightforward, just visit the CellforCash web site, find your cell phone make and model, and the site will indicate how much they’ll pay for it. If your model is not listed, or too old (normally older than 2 years), they have other sources where you can drop off or mail your cell phone at no cost.

Personally, I’ve recycled dozens of cell phones with Cell For Cash that I had lying around or found from friends or family. It’s good to know I can put these phones to good use or know that they’ve been recycled and not dumped in my local landfill poisoning our environment.

Keep it green!

Well, now a new online mail service called Earth Class Mail can help.

Earth Class Mail lets you forward all your mail to one of their 20 P.O. box addresses nationwide, from New York to San Francisco, Baltimore to Dallas and many more locations, where they scan each piece of mail and deliver it your online account. You can open and scan, forward, recycle, shred or archive each piece of mail right from your computer. This is a huge time saver and let’s you control your mail easily without ever touching it. If you have mail you want to read, just have it opened and scanned, or forwarded to a mailing address.

You can also recycle unwanted or junk mail and shred private or personal mail right from your account panel as well, making it easy to be eco-friendly and maintain your privacy.

Another benefit is that you’ll never have to change your address for life. Whenever you move, you still keep the same mailing address for your correspondence and bills. It’s also great for travelers that aren’t home often or go on extended trips for parts of the year. Just check all your mail online and take care of it in minutes. This used to involve collecting and forwarding mail to your new location every week, or calling friends or relatives to check for certain mail you were expecting, not to mention the costs involved.

Earth Class Mail has both personal and business mail services, making it easy for a business to manage their mail more efficiently, and save on traditional mail forwarding services, normally realizing a 50-90% savings. They also accept packages and can selectively forward them to the location of your choice.

It’s easy to get started with Earth Class Mail, just select an address, give Earth Class Mail authorization to handle your mail and start reviewing your mail online.

Earth Class Mail currently offers your first month of service free. Just visit the site and request the coupon.

Live green and friendly!

In recent years, with the increased levels of mercury found in foods and in our environment, health care officials have been associating the effects of mercury poisoning to not only neurological disorders, but to other diseases as well.

Most recently, officials have identified cardiovascular diseases more often in patients with abnormal mercury levels. Specifically, researchers have reviewed past studies and recognized that patients with heart problems had 15% higher mercury levels than normal.

This is no surprise since mercury is a lethal toxic poison that has been getting into our bodies more in the recent past. It mainly affects the central nervous systems and now, as new research shows, the cardiovascular system as well. Mercury poisoning in children can lead to significant health problems.

Mercury is most often found in tuna and other seafood, although it can also be found in the emissions from burning coal, dental cavities, paints, cosmetics and pharmaceutical drugs. And lately, mercury has been found in unsafe levels in more fish, more often.

It’s also found in batteries, fluorescent light bulbs and explosives. Allowing these items to be disposed into our environment in land fills leaves us open to exposure.

Currently, no government agency or body regularly tests food for mercury poisoning.

The best way to reduce mercury poisoning is to limit consumption of tuna and other fish with mercury levels of any kind (which today is often most), replace the use of fluorescent light bulbs with LED light bulbs and dispose of light bulbs responsibly through organizations like LightBulbRecycling.com.

Eating a diet free of animal foods almost completely eliminates most metal poisonings, bacterial infections (like e. coli) and other health problems caused by animal foods including high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and more. In fact, one of the best things you can do for yourself and the environment is to eliminate animal foods from your diet.

The standard method of removing mercury from your system is chelation therapy a method of ingesting a chelating agent into your body that attracts the mercury and pulls in out of your system. The chelating agent is most often administered intravenously or orally, depending on the agent.

Live green, live happy!

Start the new year ‘green’ by recycling your live Christmas tree.

Earth911 provides the most extensive database of Christmas tree recycling centers as well as facts, tips and content will help make you green this winter no matter which holidays you are celebrating.

Find a Christmas Tree Recycling Center near you.