Happy 40^th Earth Day!!  Today April 22^nd is the day set aside to increase awareness and appreciation of the environment.  Earth Day was founded in 1970 by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin as a teach-in about the environment. Earth Day has become an international day of awareness observed in virtually every country in the world. Earth Day was and is a grassroots effort to save all aspects of the environment from the impact of the human race and our waste.  The world produces approximately 1 billion tons or 2, 000,000,000,000 – that’s 2 trillion pounds of solid waste per year.  It is estimated that each person in the United States produces approximately 4.5 pounds of waste per day, that is 1600 pounds per year. 

Xerox has made a commitment to make everyday Earth day.  Xerox has a multitude of programs to reduce our impact on the environment and we try to pass this passion for the environment on to the next generation.  Gaby, the daughter of a Xerox employee has been making videos for us for years that look at Xerox’s environmental work.  In the video below please watch Gaby and other Xerox kids talking about some of the many environmental programs Xerox has incorporated worldwide. 

Let’s look at just a few of the programs and products Xerox has as part of our environmental initiatives.   Containers and packaging account for 31% or about 77 million tons of the Municipal Solid Waste in the United States alone.  Xerox is taking a proactive stance against some of this packaging.   Our solid ink products have reduced the ink packaging by almost 90 %. 

We also have recycling programs for supplies and machines.  Customers like you return 2.7 million cartridges and containers every year.   Our product take back program has remanufactured and recycled Xerox products keeping over 2 billions pounds of waste out of landfills.   

Another way we help mother earth is by planting a tree for every Xerox scanner that is registered.  We have created Xerox High Yield Business Paper™  the first mechanical paper for digital applications which uses half the trees of conventional paper.    Almost all of our printers work with recycled paper as well as they do with virgin paper.    Please look at all of these links to see what Xerox is doing to be proactive and environmentally aware.

Now I will leave you with some interesting facts I ran across while writing this article:

• New York’s largest export is waste paper.  
• An estimated 80,000,000 Hershey’s Kisses are wrapped each day, using enough aluminum foil to cover over 50 acres of space — that’s almost 40 football fields. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.  So next time you unwrap a Hershey’s Kiss remember to recycle.
• A used aluminum can is recycled and back on the grocery shelf as a new can, in as little as 60 days.  So that Coca Cola can you are drinking from today could be a Pepsi can in about 2 months.

Please go plant a tree, recycle some junk mail, cans or newspaper and do your part to help our planet and rest assured that your chosen printing and document management partner, Xerox Corporation, is doing its part!!!