Denver Probate Court Has Gone Green

And we’re keeping cars off the road too. Really!

By maintaining ecologically friendly practices through-out the office our efforts are basically equal to keeping one car off the road a year. On a global level we extract resources, manufacture products and deliver services in a way that is threatening our unique environment and our personal health. These are big issues for a small court, but every workday each of us makes decisions that affect all of these issues.

Some of the things that the Denver Probate Office is doing:

• We are doing our part to recycle. Thanks to the City and County of Denver, we have purple recycle bins located all over. Nary a piece of paper, aluminum can, or cardboard box goes in the trash anymore.
• We are recycling our print cartridges. Some of the manufactories we purchase from provide self-addressed plastic bags to return the cartridges in for recycling. Others we donate to charities that accept them.
• We encourage flex schedules for the employees. Not only for employee moral, but this cuts down on energy and time spent on commuting.
• We actually utilize the power-management settings for our monitors and pcs. A monitor uses roughly 60 to 90 watts when active but only 2 to 5 watts when in a low-power sleep mode. That may not seem like a big deal, but look at it this way - Denver Probate Court has 15 monitors. 15 monitors in low-power sleep mode when inactive is equal to taking one car off the road in one year’s time.
• Digitize. The greenest paper is no paper at all. DPC is a paper-on-demand court, so there is a lot less paper used here. When we do need to print, two-sided printing is encouraged.

We are proud of our efforts and the baby steps that are being taken towards becoming more environmentally conscious.

Good for the earth, good for our health, and good for the bottom line.

Green Links:

changethemargins.com - pushing for everyone who uses a printer to change the settings on their margins from the standard 1.25 inches to .75 inches. They note that if everyone in the US complies with their wich, we's save an area slightly smaller than the state of Rhode Island - every year. That's a lot of trees.