Back in April of '06, we began issuing the majority of our reports and invoices online, easily saving over 30 thousand sheets of paper a year. Today we're taking our green initiatives a step further and have begun recycling all disposable paper products through Shred-it, a document destruction company. It's secure, convenient and amazingly affordable. Together Shred-it and their clients have saved more than 9 million trees each year! I encourage everyone to take a look at their brochure.

Here's another tree friendly idea: for the holidays (or any occasion for that matter) check out the Arbor Day Foundation's Give-A-Tree card program. For every greeting card purchased, a tree is planted in a national forest.

As thoughtful direct marketers and good stewards of the environment, our company wanted to find a way to recycle our loose paper. Our first stop was to search on line our regional resource and recovery authority, http://www.hrra.org/ . At the top of their web page was a place for "tip of the week" which was how to stop "junk mail". When you click on it you are taken to another site for New American Dream which rails against direct mail, advocates the creation of a "Do Not Mail" list and much more.

It seem odd to me that a resource recovery organization would promote this as opposed to creating an option by which people could recycle catalogs and loose mail. They could turn it into a win-win proposition.