This year Publishers Clearing House went the extra mile to celebrate Earth Day. While it’s officially recognized on April 22nd, PCH goes green all year long! That’s because Publishers Clearing House has always recognized the importance of being a good corporate citizen. Part of that responsibility is doing business in a way that minimizes our impact on the environment.  Let me show you how.

PCH Reduces, Reuses and Recycles
They call themselves “The Green Team”, and they’ve been hard at work since 2007 to establish company-wide policies that save energy, reduce office paper, and ensure that we are buying paper and packaging that is produced in an environmentally responsible way. They’ve come up with simple and easy ways that can really add up to big energy savings, like reminding us to shut down our computers each night, turn off lights when we leave our office, and to set our copiers to automatically copy on both sides of the paper.  We also have different wastebaskets for paper only and for non-paper office waste, like pens and food, plus special recycling containers for metal, glass and plastic.  PCH goes green with simple, easy steps that work!

Book, Battery and Cell Phone Drive
It’s important to dispose of electronics in a responsible way, and the PCH Green Team has set up collection bins so everyone can donate old or unused batteries for recycling.  This ongoing effort has been a big success!

The same goes for gently used cell phones.  Donations were collected for “Cell Phones for Soldiers”, a national nonprofit serving troops and veterans with free communication services and emergency funding. They also recycle tablets and MP3 players. Proceeds from the donated phones are used to send prepaid international calling cards to our troops to use with their approved phones. What a great way to help out our troops and vets!

PCH has also accepted the “Big Brothers Big Sisters of Long Island Book Drive Challenge”.  Our goal is to collect 2,000 gently used books. Once we meet this goal, Big Brothers Big Sisters will have the necessary funding to match up an “at risk” child facing adversity to a caring, screened Big Brother or Big Sister.  Those books are piling up fast, and we are so proud to support this incredible mentoring program for children in need!

File Clean Out Week
We were also able to do our share for Earth Day by throwing out unwanted and unneeded paper files in an earth friendly manner during one whole week of office cleaning. Was it ever a good feeling to shed that paper and free up some valuable office space (and to finally see our desks)!  Can you believe that we shredded 2.25 tons of paper and recycled 6.31 tons of paper? Amazing!

Earth Day Celebration
We had a full day of planned activities here for Earth Day on April 22nd.  Free, reusable water bottles (featuring the PCH logo of course) were distributed to all employees to help cut down on our use of wax coated cups in the cafeteria and the amount of waste going into our landfills. (Most of us already use our favorite travel mugs at work for our coffee.) There were fun festivities held outside on the lawn in front of PCH headquarters, including volleyball games, bicycles for riding, and healthy earth day treats!

I’m sure you all had your own Earth Day events in your local communities, too. So tell us in the comments section below, how did you celebrate, and how do you plan to help the environment?

Jane M.
PCH Creative Dept.

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