Green freelancing

One of the foundations I wanted to have to my freelance career on my move from working for a company was the ability to reduce the impact my business had on the environment. It’s in parts oddly turned into a bit of a battle and quest with more than one hiccup along the way. It’s also about digitising the last fragments of my life as slowly I look to having everything digitally accessible.

Initially the idea seems sensible, you’re in control of the way your business runs and able to make those decisions in the past that you inherited through business practices written in stone they were that old. In past companies the paper trail of the company has been more akin to snowflakes than requirements. I identified a few areas I thought I could use as my starting blocks to achieving a more ‘green’ approach to my business practice.

The successes and partial successes

Most of these are fairly obvious but I thought I’d write about my experiences here. It’s been months since I actually even had to use a stamp or print anything out. My printer actually sits unplugged in as it’s simply not used anymore.

• Studio heated using wood burner
• Paperless business: this ranges from invoicing through to contracts.
• Paperless accounting.
• Digital resources: rather than printed magazines I’ve turned to use digital versions.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these points and I’ll explain some of the hurdles as there certainly were some and things still aren’t perfect on all fronts.

Natural heating

This perhaps is one of the single best things I could have done beyond most other things. When we moved to our new property we were lucky enough to have in the studio space a wood burner. I can’t sign it’s praises enough both as a green option and life enhancing choice. I think it’s fairly simple to see how it’s ‘greener’ than our oil central heating or even electrical, but the bit I didn’t think about was the actual emotional and inspirational impact of a burning fire in the room. The UK quite frankly is various shades of grey for the winter months and having a wood burning stove in the room really lifts you. It may be monotone outside but I’m snuggly and warm and noticed it really helps inspiration wise. We’re lucky as have a free supply of wood so this could become expensive and have ‘green’ costs in sense of fuel delivery if that option wasn’t there. Another great use for our wood burner is paper isn’t needed to be shredded anymore we just put it on the fire (of course you can’t burn plastics) – something very therapeutic to setting fire to old bills.

Paperless office

It’s now close to over a year since any quote or invoice came from my business in a non PDF format. I encourage clients to not print out however I can’t control what happens their end. This has worked out well for me and is something that quite simply I can’t even think about changing back to.

Paperless contracts sound fairly simple in practice it’s not, the problem though is getting clients to adopt this method too. I spent the first year implementing this frequently sending with the contract emails a little how to for this however it was on the whole ignored. I’ve been considering various services that allow digital signatures however so far yet to explore this to the full focus it really requires.

Paperless accounting

This isn’t specifically something I did as much as a natural thing we all do now. It really kicked in for me about 6 months ago when we didn’t have a car for a month and a bit. The last bit of paper banking was some clients still paying by cheque, as I couldn’t even get to a bank without quite the hike I finally had an excuse to train the last dinosaur client into using BACS payments. I noticed the other day that NatWest now have an iPhone application and I’m hopeful that my bank HSBC won’t be far off as this really is something that would benefit me. Whilst paperless banking works I personally won’t access it unless I own that device and using the browser through the iPhone is a case of too much information on too small a screen with regards to my banking interface. My bank uses a dongle to connect for security so it’s a lot more secure than some I’ve seen, but cautious nature is always best with online banking.

The biggest fight for me with regards to online banking was statements. It took months to despite ticking the ‘do not send’ box get my bank to stop sending me statements – they still do on my ISA. My mind boggles how hard this process was for me and I can only hope that I just was a slip through the net on this and that everyone trying to take a paperless approach to banking doesn’t have to go through this hoop.

Digital resources and magazines

There was a time each month I’d end up adding 4-6 small trees to my already large wood collection of magazines. I still have a few shelves of these but for a while now unless it’s got a digital version I simply don’t get that magazine. It really was brought home to me our last move when I had 3 boxes just of magazines. Digital magazines are far easier to search, get information and even grab articles from so aside from the ‘green’ element really are a far superior method for me. Downside is Ikea maybe won’t get me buying a new bookcase this year. I also now tend to use far more blogs and my RSS feeder subscriptions probably count for 50% of my new information that in past I would have got from magazines only 2-3 years ago.

The failures

One major area so far I’ve failed in is moving from moleskins to a digital sketch book. It simply hasn’t worked for me so far and I always fall back on using the moleskin. It’s one area I’m really keen to progress with. I use a digital scrapbook so I’m slowly getting there. At this point I’m convinced it’s more of habit than anything else. There is something about sitting mapping out stuff and sketching in the moleskin. Perhaps it’s just I’ve not found the right tool for it digitally, however I don’t think that’s quite it. To move onto a purely digital process for my projects this really is the last major stepping stone I need to get over.

The must do betters

I have aside from the note failures 2 key areas I want to focus on in 2010. For me, this ‘green’ approach is one that should evolve and has taken time. I find change rests far easier with me if I adopt it piece by piece rather than going insane right at the start. Quite frankly time also hasn’t allowed for everything to be implemented at once.

• Goal to have all books digital
• Goal to ditch all old notebooks and folders

Out with the physical library in with the digital book age

This perhaps is one of the biggest hurdles and will reap the biggest effect on my life. As I write this to my right are two long bookcases, to my left and behind me is another large modular bookcase. It’s my goal to if possible by the end of 2010 or if not as soon as I can, to have every book I own and will own from that point purely in a digital format. The kindle is now available in the UK but I’m still undecided on which option I will go for regarding the device that will serve these books. I also have to research into getting some back copies of some treasured if a little old books. I do however look forward to the day I can either get rid of the bookcases or at least not feel quite like I should open for business as a library.

Ditch the notebooks take two: dealing with the back log

This point links into the massive failure to cut the umbilical cord of the moleskin from my life. Whilst by my nature I am not really a hoarder with regards to notes and information I am queen of the ‘don’t throw away in case’. I must have been a squirrel in my past life the way I clutch onto notebooks. I have almost every note taken during any course I have ever taken – to illustrate the absurdity of this I last took a course nearly a decade ago. I have shelves and books full of these antiquated notes. From my long past writing days I have about 3 incomplete novels and enough poems to make a poet drown, all stored on shelves and in boxes having not seen the light of day for years apart from being moved from one house to another. I plan to slowly type up or scan (not decided which is best method to do yet) so at least I can have digital copies that can collect virtual dust. A probably more merciless person would say ‘throw out’ but part of me clings to those first pieces of code I wrote during my Software Engineering days. This is probably the part of me that if allowed to would enjoy a romantic comedy. It’s going to be more of a project than the great scanning of photographs of 2007 I undertook but one I think will be really worthwhile.

I am aware that most of the going green I have done is small in it’s nature. This however is also about digitising my life fully and started when I decided to have a mass scanning in of all my photographs – I no longer have any photo albums that are not digital and only a few photos in frames in the house. It’s a process I’m constantly looking at tweaking and for better methods.