We consult professionals about all kinds of things: career advice, tax preparation, real estate. But, one thing you may have never considered is a recycling consultant. (Yes, there is such a thing!)

Believe it or not, there are people out there you can hire to help you maximize your recycling potential at home or in the office. I’m going to focus on workplace recycling consultants, because let’s face it, there is a lot of waste in the workplace. If your office is anything like the offices I’ve worked in, the volume of wasted paper alone is enough to make your stomach churn. So, here are the names of a couple of recycling consultants, along with information on how they can help your office go green.

Great Forest Sustainability Solutions: Based in New York City, this “sustainability consulting and sustainability program management” company has worked with financial institutions, universities, municipalities and other organizations around the country to assess sustainability needs and challenges and develop recycling programs focused on “making recycling as easy as possible, while driving down costs associated with waste removal.” The company also has LEED-accredited professionals who can help building owners navigate the LEED-certification process.

Boston Waste Solutions: This company works with a wide range of businesses, including restaurants, hotels, supermarkets and retail stores, to identify recycling and waste reduction opportunities and implement new solid waste management plans. It also provides detailed monthly reports showing results of the new plan.

Both of these companies claim that in the end their services actually save money for their clients by streamlining waste management services and reducing waste in the first place. So, if you feel like your workplace could be a lot more sustainable, it might be worth pitching this idea to the boss — I have never met a boss who didn’t like saving money!

Items collected for the Writing Instrument Brigade

TerraCycle works in a series of brigades. These brigades are designed to collect items that aren’t traditionally recycled and then upcycle them into new consumer goods. In addition to keeping these products out of landfills, the brigades also serve as fundraising tools for schools, churches and nonprofit organizations.

TerraCycle has dozens of different brigades, but three would be a good fit for businesses: the Scotch Tape Brigade, the Cell Phone Brigade and the Writing Instrument Brigade. Interested businesses simply collect the products and once a minimum amount has been reached, ship the product off to TerraCycle on TerraCycle’s dime.

For example, participants in the Scotch Tape Brigade collect the cores from tape dispensers. These cores would otherwise end up in landfills, but now TerraCycle is collecting them for future product development use. Once a company collects 50 cores, they ship them to TerraCycle. TerraCycle then donates $0.02/core to the company’s charity of choice. The Scotch Tape Brigade has nearly 2,000 participating locations that have collected more than 1,200 cores totaling 22 pounds.

The TerraCycle Cell Phone Brigade is a bit more profitable to nonprofit beneficiaries. For each cell phone collected, $0.25 is donated to your company’s charity of choice. There are nearly 1,000 collection teams that have donated more than 25 pounds of cell phones to TerraCycle, keeping these old phones out of landfills.

One of TerraCycle’s newest brigades is the Writing Instrument Brigade. The company has partnered with PaperMate and Sharpie to keep these polymer-based plastics out of landfills. Although the program is relatively new, TerraCycle has reached its initial cap of 500 participating locations. However, TerraCycle is always expanding its brigades and will likely open this one up to new participants soon.

While the Writing Instrument Brigade is one of the newer projects, more than 17,000 writing instruments have already been collected. This has diverted approximately 357 pounds of waste from area landfills and raised almost $400 for charitable organizations.

A home office may be a more eco-friendly work option.

My computer is my life. For now, it is my source of income, my source of entertainment and my connection to my family members. I don’t have a television, but I watch certain shows online. I talk to my family using Google’s free video-chat feature. But, most of my time spent on the computer is for work.

I feel as though my work life now is more eco-friendly than when I worked in a law office and used supplies like sticky notes, pens, copy paper, highlighters, labels, printers, postage machines and manila folders. In every office that I have worked people go through paper as though it grows on trees, not from trees.

But, seriously, a 2004 study by the National Energy Education Development Project (the NEED Project) shows that 27,500 BTUs of energy is needed to produce one ream (500 sheets) of copy paper. The amount of energy needed equals about 2 gallons of gasoline. If you work in an office building that uses a printer and makes copies, you probably know how quickly that 500 sheets is exhausted.

Pencils and pens take energy to produce. Although the details are slim, German pencil company Faber-Castell claims it uses water-based paint to cover its pencils and began a reforestation project in Brazil. With both paper and pencils, a lot of transport is involved to keep businesses supplied.

By working from home, I use zero paper, rarely drive (and therefore rarely need gasoline and rarely emit carbon dioxide from my car) and submit all my work electronically. It sounds good, but it’s not as great as it sounds.

Computers use a lot of energy. You can calculate about how much energy yours uses on the U.S. Department of Energy’s website. Laptops generally use less energy to power, and I’ve estimated that my laptop uses about 110 kilowatts annually.

Here are some tips to save energy while using your computer:

• Ditch the screen savers. They require more of your computer’s CPU (which translates into more energy used) to run, and they don’t really save energy.
• Use your computer’s sleep mode when you’re not going to use your computer for a while.
• When you’re done with your computer for the day (or even for several hours), turn it off.
• If you have your computer plugged into a surge protector, turn that off as well. Every little bit helps.

And last, but definitely not least, I’m lucky enough to live in a high-rise apartment that offers on-site recycling. Not all of my friends in the area have this option. I do have to take my recycling down to the designated area on the first floor, and I usually coordinate my trips to the recycling area when I’m leaving the building. By doing that, I use the elevators as little as possible (to save energy AND because no one likes to wait for the elevator).

Herman Miller Aeron Chair

As a freelancer, I rely heavily on my home office. But like many work-from-homers, my “office” is actually my dining room table, or sometimes my couch, depending on what mood I’m in. I don’t mind my setup, but I have been thinking lately that some real office furniture might serve me — and my career — well. While doing some research, I came across several green furniture options that I think would be of interest both to home office types and 9-5ers.

What

“Recycled” office furniture can refer to furniture that’s pre-owned or to furniture that’s made from recycled and/or sustainable materials, such as bamboo, wheat straw, recycled wood fibers and non-VOC varnishes and adhesives.

Why

Buying office furniture that’s been owned before reduces waste by extending an item’s life and keeping it out of a landfill for as long as possible. Big companies toss out gently used office chairs and desks by the thousands each year, so the opportunity to refurbish and reuse those items is significant.

As for new, green office furniture, the advantages are fairly straightforward: They’re easier on the planet from the get-go. Recycled materials break down quicker and are less polluting to produce than many of the materials used in traditional office furniture manufacturing. (Look around an office the next time you get a chance — there’s an awful lot of plastic in those chairs, desks, and cubicle walls.) As an added bonus, green workspaces are often well designed, which makes them more appealing than the standard beige-on-beige look many offices go for.

Where

Green office furniture seems to be a growth industry right now, so there’s no shortage of places to shop. Here are just a few:

• Recycled Office Solutions
• Ecowork
• The Green Office
• Kimball Office

Sustainable products have always appealed to me, but until now, I’ve honestly never considered seeking out eco-friendly furniture. It’s a pretty intriguing concept though! I like the idea of going green with something so big and on display in my apartment, especially if it’s designed well (like a Herman Miller Aeron chair, which is both way more ergonomic than my couch and 94% recyclable). Maybe green office furniture will even help inspire my green blogging career!

At the signing ceremony in Moscow June 5, Theodore Oben, chief of the UNEP’s Outreach Section, said, “I am sure the memorandum signed today will not only be a written commitment, but will guarantee that during the preparation and staging of Sochi 2014 great strides are made in environmental protection in Sochi and the Krasnodar Region.”

Dmitry Chernyshenko, president and chief executive of Sochi 2014 and a Sochi native, said, “Signing this important Memorandum will help ensure Sochi 2014 is able to introduce Green Standards to every level of the Games’ preparation and will ensure that the Organizing Committee continues to work with international environment experts to support this.”

The Sochi Olympic organizers say they plan to invest US$1.75 billion in energy conservation and renewable energy and offset the remaining greenhouse gas emissions from the use of electricity, air travel and ground transportation.

Other environmental initiatives include the development of green belts in the city and reforestation of the Sochi National Park.

Earlier this year, the Sochi Olympics joined UNEP’s Climate Neutral Network, an initiative to promote global action and involvement towards low carbon economies and societies that includes countries, cities, multinationals, NGOs and other UN agencies.

A series of conferences will allow international experts to monitor and analyze key environmental indicators before and after the Games and environmental education is planned.

Sochi, situated between the Black Sea and the snow-capped Caucasus Mountains in Russia’s Krasnodar Region, is renowned for its pristine setting.

In an effort to preserve this natural beauty, the city in 2008 followed UNEP’s recommendation to move the bobsleigh and luge tracks away from the Caucasus nature reserve. This UNESCO World Heritage site is one of the only mountain areas in Europe that remains virtually untouched by human activity. In changing the venue, organizers stressed that they are committed to creating an “environmental legacy for the future of the region.”

“We developed the Sochi 2014 environmental strategy and this will ensure that the ecological situation in the Krasnodar Region is enhanced for generations to come,” said Chernyshenko at the signing of the agreement.

The organizers marked the signing of the agreement by planting trees in several locations in Russia as part of UNEP’s Billion Trees Campaign, and effort to combat climate change. To date, more than four billion trees have been planted as part of the campaign, and UNEP has set a new target of seven billion trees by the end of 2009 – one for every person on the planet.

The day after Russian Olympic organizers signed the agreement with UNEP, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Kozak, deputy chairman of government, announced that a second cargo port at Sochi, viewed by residents as an ecological disaster in the making, will not be built.

When construction began last July in a densely inhabited lowland area, the industrial port was protested by local residents, local government, a local association of investors and property owners and the nonprofit group Environmental Watch on North Caucasus, EWNC.

“This is a very significant development because it removes the danger of building an ecologically dangerous unit on the Black Sea coast, which threatened the ecosystems of Black sea, ecological prosperity and the recreational resources of Sochi,” EWNC said in a statement.

Not only did the port construction destroy the living environment of Sochi residents, EWNC said the residents were outraged that construction was begun without the necessary permits and even without the final project design.

They tried to “construct under the Olympic cover a cargo port for subsequent long-term commercial use,” the group said, adding that the port project “opened the practice of the systematic illegal building in the implementation of Olympic projects.”

“This is the great victory of the inhabitants and public organizations, showing that the active civil resistance to inadvisable and ecologically dangerous Olympic projects can bring fruits,” the group stated.

But still unaddressed are the group’s concerns that a road planned to access the Olympic Ski Complex on Psekhako Ridge would cross the Western Caucasus UNESCO World Heritage Site as well as its protected buffer zone.

The investor behind the road is the Russian state company Gazprom, the world’s largest gas company. The ridge is the location of Gazprom’s new mountain resort, ski slopes, ski lifts and buildings, as well as the Olympic Ski Complex. Construction of the Olympic Ski Stadium with operating facilities is scheduled for completion in 2010.

Environmental Watch on North Caucasus has appealed to the International Olympic Committee and United Nations agencies to block construction of the road. (ENS, May 29, 2009)

UNEP has become increasingly active as an environmental advisor for the greening of mass events. In partnership with the International Olympic Committee, UNEP has been helping to green the Olympic Games over the last few years – most recently the Beijing 2008 Games, for which UNEP undertook environmental assessments before and after the Games. UNEP also has signed an agreement with the organizers of Vancouver 2010 in a bid to help green the next Winter Games.

The cardboard tube inside rolls of Saran Wrap and aluminum foil is particularly sturdy and well-suited for craft projects. Turn one of those sturdy tubes into attractive napkin holders with this tutorial.

Craft-oriented blog Merriment noticed how thick the cardboard tubes inside Saran Wrap are. Your average person might have been content toss it in the recycling bin, but crafty DIYers are forever on the lookout for new projects.

With a bit of no-sew tape, fabric, and fabric glue, plus basic tools like some scissors and a razor knife, you’ll be cranking out some DIY napkin rings in no time, and they won’t look like they came out of your kitchen drawer. To complement the dining room without any trips to mega-markup home stores, browse our previous posts on how to fold fancy napkin arrangements and how to recycle wine corks into placeholders. For detailed instructions and lots of pictures, check out the DIY napkin ring guide at the link below.