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This post on how to be a more eco-friendly real estate agent is naturally inspired by Earth Day, which is April 22nd. There are many benefits of going green in real estate, from using green building materials to making the places we live healthier and cleaner. In honor of Earth Day, we’ve put together some of our most environmentally friendly ideas that are easy for you and your whole office to start practicing.
1. Print Less: While I don’t know of the actual numbers and statistics on how much paper is wasted in the real estate industry, I do know our office alone went through about 2 cases of paper per week right from the printer. Printing double sided, reducing font sizes, or going electronic can all help reduce the amount of paper being used. Only print what you absolutely need.
2. Stop Faxing: Faxing wastes a lot of paper as well. Using services such as MyFax and others can help you greatly reduce the amount of paper you fax, if not eliminate it completely.
3. Reduce Mailers: Most of us are flooded with junk mail in our mail boxes. While direct mail can have some marketing results, it is not always the most cost effective and certainly does not help the environment! Creating a creative email marketing campaign can be just as effective when implemented properly – and help not only the environment but help you save money as well.
4. Choose Eco Friendly Web hosting: Very few people take into consideration how environmentally friendly their web host is. However, when you think about companies running thousands of computers at once it can make quite an impact! I was impressed that my host 1and1.com which not only is exceptionally cheap and reliable also uses hydroelectric power!
5. Learn About Green Building: Green building practices are becoming more and more common and as a real estate agent, it is helpful to know what the latest trends are as well as what is good for the environment. Find out which builders near you commit to building green and take some time researching the different ways homes are becoming more energy efficient and using green building materials.
Have any other ideas for how agents can celebrate Earth Day and be more eco friendly? Share them in the comments below!
3 Comments
Here’s what I am doing as my part.
1. Print Less: We just paperport to make sure that everything we print is really need and reduces printing error pages
2. Stop Faxing: we use efax, so there’s no paper and ink used.
3. Reduce Mailer: we email previous clients and prospects all items, birthday, x-mas
Even if you don’t care about the environment just think of it this way: most people do and you can easily get more clients as an Eco-friendly real estate agent.
Moving our marketing online is the biggest step we have made towards a greener office. The amount of paper we used to use was just ridiculous