A post by contributing writer Melissa Chungfat.

When Barack Obama delivered his speech on November 4, 2008, he mentioned the challenges of a planet in peril and the worst financial crisis in a century. In the spirit of collaboration, he called upon all Americans to “join in the work of remaking this nation.” You can now check out the Clean Tech for Obama website. Cleantech and Green Business for Obama (CT4-O) is a self organized, volunteer based constituency group supporting the Obama campaign.

Businesses play a large part in helping solve a variety of environmental problems. Aaron Cramer, President and CEO of Business for Social Responsibility, said, “In a difficult economy, collaboration is often the efficient choice.” A growing number of businesses have taken their own initiative in greening their business operations or developing green habits in the office.

Because a tremendous amount of office paper accumulates and goes to waste in day-to-day business operations, recycling paper is one of many ways companies can take to significantly reduce their impact on the environment. GreenBiz.com reported that every ton of paper that is made from recycled fiber saves about 17 trees. They named a few companies who have integrated paper recycling in their business:

1. Bank of America saved $483,000 in trash hauling fees by recycling tens of thousands tons of paper for decades.

2. Hewlett Packard saved 367,000 trees by recycling 43 million pounds of paper.

3. Nynex, a division of Bell Atlantic, recycles old phonebooks into payment remittance envelopes.

These are just a few examples, besides the top three myth busters behind recycled paper, of how green practices saves company cash.

Mindy Lubber of the organization Ceres, a coalition of investors, environmental and public interest groups, said that environment and economics “have to be integrated.”

In a candidate, off the cuff moment captured by the Huffington Post and Earth First, Obama succintly says, “‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”

To help the environment while continuing to “engine” their business, Green Printer uses 100% post-consumer stock for their print jobs. Having done the calculations of how many trees they can save by using more sustainable printing methods, they set the goal in 2007l of saving between 750,000 to a million trees over the next ten years.

Want to know how much greenhouse gas, trees and wastewater you can save by using affordable, eco-friendly paper products? Find out and keep track of your organization’s environmental savings today by adding Green Printer’s Eco-Calculator widget code to your blog, Facebook or website.