Here's a tip to help you green your workplace:

Provide organic and vegetarian alternatives at meetings and company functions.

One of the places we have the highest impact on the Earth is in what we feed ourselves. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, meat and poultry consumption is second only to cars and light trucks in the list of most harmful types of human consumption. Fruit, vegetable and grain production are a close third. (The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices).

Since not eating is clearly not an option, we need to rethink what we food we are consuming. There are ways to use our food choices to promote sustainable food production and to minimize our impact on the Earth's life-sustaining systems.

Include vegetarian and organic alternatives at meetings and conferences. Eating less meat is one of the easiest ways to shrink your footprint on the planet.

Provide organic, shade-grown, and fairly-traded coffee. Not only will you be reducing your pesticide consumption, but you will be providing fair wages to the farmers who grow your coffee. Couple fairly-traded coffee with unbleached or reusable coffee filters that can be composted to minimize your impact even more!

See our feature Go Organic! for a list of the Top Ten Reasons to switch to organic food.

For more information on fair trade products (not just coffee!), check out some of these sites:

Bridgehead A Canadian organization and one of the original fair traders. Their website includes an on-line catalogue.

Oxfam International This international organization works in partnership with producers around the world.

Equal Exchange Lots of information about fair trade coffee.