Celebrating One Year In The Green!
Carolina Pediatrics has been taking steps toward a greener business since 2007 when we made the decision to become a paperless office. The transition from a paper system to a digital system was completed in May, 2008. Now, a year later, we celebrate our efforts in bettering the planet.
At Carolina Pediatrics our primary goal is to maintain and improve the well-being of our community’s children. For that, you can depend on us. We work hard to keep your family healthy.
But what is the maintenance and improvement of our children’s health if we then leave them in a world that lacks stability? While our staff focuses on children’s healthcare daily, two years ago Carolina Pediatrics decided to zero in on another aspect of health. Now we take steps toward the preservation of Earth’s natural, limited resources each and every workday. We believe that if we make small changes to increase the environmental sustainability of our business, and if we encourage others to do the same, we can make a difference.
Carolina Pediatrics celebrates one year of paperless filing this May. The switch from traditional paper charts to more progressive digital charts is proof of our commitment to the preservation of our planet. Instead of printing out countless charts, and wasting paper and ink, we now house all of our client information in SSL secure servers. Our staff can access these charts with the click of a few buttons, and without any excessive waste.
The means of communication between Carolina Pediatrics and clients have also gone green. Whenever possible we send faxes, bills and invoices to our clients digitally rather than through the postal service. Staff paychecks, too, no longer make it to print. We deposit payroll directly into our staff’s bank accounts. This means no more paper checks and deposit slips.
According to MDF Systems, the average US office uses enough paper to result in over 1,000 felled trees and the production of 300,000 pounds of carbon dioxide. And it’s not just the paper that creates a problem. The machines using this paper copiers, printers and fax machines consume tens of thousands of kilowatt-hours of energy per year. By cutting paper out of our office’s functions, we also eliminate the use of these energy-consuming machines.
This simple change in the way our business functions helps to change the future of the environment in which our children will grow old. By producing less paper waste, landfills fill more slowly. Decreased wastefulness lessons the number and size of landfills, which in turn increases the space available on an increasingly-crowded planet.
By using less paper, Carolina Pediatric requires the production of less paper. Making paper requires energy, and energy creation requires the consumption of Earth’s natural resources. When we use less paper, we save energy energy that our children might put to good use in years to come.
Our digital system is one step toward environmental preservation. We expect to take further steps in the future. In the meantime, take note of the decreased amount of paper in our offices. It feels good to be green!
Celebrating one year in the Green
Published: September 10, 2009 © Carolina Pediatric Therapy
