Published: October 01. 2009 2:00AM

By Susan Schwartkopf

As we work toward making all aspects of our lives more environmentally responsible, one area many of us save for last is our work lives. If you work for someone else and they're not into being ‘green,' you might feel like you don't have a lot of control over how eco-friendly you can be at work. But, whether you work in a corporate high rise or have a home office, there are plenty of ways you can reduce your eco footprint. Here are a few that make a big impact. Pass them on to your co-workers and your boss. You never know, maybe you'll inspire a workplace green revolution! Give your workspace a mini green makeover. All you need is energy-efficient lighting to replace those incandescent bulbs, eco-friendly office supplies like refillable pens made of recycled materials, a plant to cleanse toxins from the air, a mini recycling bin, and a power strip that allows you to turn off all your electronics at once (and keep them from sucking up phantom power).

Use a smartphone. If Mother Nature were a chief technology officer, she would make sure that every single employee on the planet owned a smartphone. The BlackBerry, the Apple iPhone and the Palm Pre are just a few of the electronic devices that bring the digital revolution to your fingertips and reduce your use of items like notepads, photo prints, CDs and DVDs. Smartphones bring the features of an MP3 player, digital camera, digital video recorder, GPS navigation and laptop computer together in a single device. Of course, you can use them to make phone calls, too. The all-in-one design of a smartphone eliminates the need to own multiple electronic devices, which means fewer products that have to be produced to deliver the same number of features and benefits. In other words, you can have your gear and your planet, too.

If the job calls for full-sized office technology, make sure to look for the Energy Star label. A home office using an Energy Star computer, printer and fax machine saves enough electricity every year to light your house for over four years. Now imagine how much energy a whole office building can save. Also, have you been told that you can save more power by leaving your computer on than by shutting it down? Not true. Computers use about two seconds' worth of power to start up, according to the U.S. Office for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

Go paperless in every way possible. Sure, you'll still have the occasional need for paper items, but that doesn't mean you can't cut way back on the amount of paper that you use. E-mail everything. Learn how to convert documents to PDF format instead of printing them out (it's easy, we promise!). Use a scanner instead of a photocopier and distribute the copies electronically. When you do have to print, use print preview religiously to assess whether you can make the text fit on fewer pages and to ensure you won't end up with errors that require reprinting. Also, use recycled paper. The average office worker goes through about 10,000 sheets of paper every year. If 10,000 TALK Greenville readers use only recycled paper over the next year, we'll save about 12,000 trees.