Hosted unified communications service provider
Alteva is enabling the community and the world to go green, in more ways than one – including literally walking the walk.
The firm, headquartered in Philadelphia, Pa., will be volunteering in the 4th Annual Philly Spring Cleanup on April 2 to help put an end to litter and illegal dumping on City of Brotherly Love’s streets. Last year over 11,000 volunteers collected nearly 1.5 million pounds of trash. Additionally, Alteva (News - Alert) will support the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team in its Red Goes Green recycling program on May 7 in an effort to help lead the way in a clean energy movement at professional sports venues.
Alteva is headquartered in the historic Bourse building along Independence Mall and takes great pride in contributing to the community. And another way it is doing so is being located in a city center location that has great access to transit, cycling and walking plus it has telecommuting that together provide greener, healthier and safer alternatives to the private automobile.
With this a majority (56 percent) of the Alteva’s employees do not drive. Of these 26 percent participate in the TransitChek tax-free transit incentive plan, 26 percent are walkers and 17 percent are cyclists (there is a bicycle commuter benefit similar to TransitChek) while 8.7 percent work from home. Meanwhile 4.3 percent carpool.
For Alteva's headquarters office, that is the equivalent to an estimated 9,000-10,000 lbs of carbon dioxide (CO (2) emissions per month saved.
Philadelphia has one of North America’s most extensive and diverse transit networks including electric commuter regional rail, light rail, subways, streetcars, electric trolley buses and conventional buses. It has a wide array of great walkable/cycle-friendly neighborhoods. There is Amtrak service from New York City, Newark, N.J., Baltimore, Md. and Washington, D.C. and from Lancaster and Harrisburg Pa. NJ Transit offers buses and trains from southern New Jersey including Atlantic City. Its RiverLINE diesel light rail links Trenton, Bordentown and Burlington with Philly via a transfer to the PATCO rapid transit at Camden that then provides a spectacular ride over the Delaware River on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. And the Philly region is hub to a massive communications system with extensive residential broadband including VoIP and advanced high-capacity wireless networks.
Moreover Alteva’s VoIP-based hosted solutions also help firms go green. It estimates that they can shrink its clients’ power consumption by up to 84 percent. This reduces the resulting CO (2) emissions produced as a byproduct of generating electricity by 900,000 pounds per year: the equivalent to the emissions generated in 64 average homes annually! Alteva’s solutions also make working remotely and conferencing easier and less expensive and therefore more feasible: thereby eliminating CO (2) and other dangerous emittants from individual commutes and travel.
Louis Hayner (News - Alert), chief sales officer of Alteva offers these other going-green tips:
Go paperless
Pay your bills online. Cancel any unnecessary magazine subscriptions and junk mail. Make phone calls or send e-mails in place of handwritten letters when possible. Don’t print out documents unless it’s necessary. By keeping electronic copies or files, you are also saving on your office real
estate from having to load up on filing cabinets and/or lease additional off-site storage space.
“Statistics show that 90 percent of the world’s information is still on paper,” Hayner points out. “You don't necessarily have to implement an electronic filing system, but reducing your carbon footprint can be as simple as reducing your paper usage.”
Buy rechargeable batteries
A single rechargeable battery can replace between 50 and 300 throwaway batteries. Regular batteries are not biodegradable and are full of toxic materials. When they are not probably disposed of, old batteries can leak toxic materials. Also, make sure to donate any old items that you are not using anymore to the appropriate venues. This can include car batteries, old computers, cell phones, ink cartridges and paint cans.
Recycle
Many towns recycle, but many offices do not. Keep buckets or bins around the office and urge employees to recycle their paper, bottles, and cans. If there is a shared kitchen space in the office, make sure to buy products in bulk - there's less packaging and you'll save money.
Conserve Your H20
While bottled water comes in recyclable plastics, why not install a water filter in your kitchen faucet or purchase a pitcher filter like a Brita? You can also save water by taking shorter showers and installing a low-flow showerhead and toilet. Also, don’t let the water run while you are brushing your teeth or washing your face.
“It's hard to break some of these habits, but it beats breaking the bank!” says Hayner.
Brendan B. Read is TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Carrie Schmelkin
