Making the choice to create your own lunches for the kids to bring to school and for you to bring to work is a simple one that can make a huge impact in reducing your family’s carbon footprint. One of the simplest ways to cut down on lunch waste is to have your family make the switch to reusable sandwich bags and lunch boxes.

The average family goes through over 500 plastic sandwich bags a year. With the wide range of reusable bags now available in the market, there’s no need to keep buying the disposable baggies that clog up landfills. You can now take your pick of affordable, green alternatives. Smart Planet offers collapsible lunch boxes and containers, Etsy offers a wide range of cute and homemade sandwich baggies,  and even the big retailers Target and Walmart are now selling eco-friendly, reusable lunch bags and boxes.

For more information on plastic sandwich bag alternatives, see articles from the following sites:

EPA

Mighty Nest

Earth911

Practically Green

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not."

   ~ Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

Infographic created by WellHome

Coffee shops are given as a perfect example of such a place. In a coffee shop, there is noise and activity but it is subdued and not loud enough to be frustrating and distracting, as it can be in many large work environments. How is this information helpful for office workers who don’t have the luxury of working in a coffee shop, or leaving their offices at all? Well, a startup calling itself Coffitivity is hoping that office workers tied to their desks will choose to plug in to their site and audibly place themselves in the ideal coffee shop work environment. The site is simple, and does nothing more than play ambient coffee shop noise.

If the sounds of a coffee shop aren’t your thing, however, a large number of similar sites are beginning to pop up that offer different ambient noises for office workers to listen to. My personal favorite is RainyMood, which plays the sounds of a rainstorm outside a building, but a few others you may enjoy are Calm, which plays ocean sounds, and Coding, which plays the clickety click sounds of someone typing away at their keyboard.

According to the research published in the article “Is Noise Always Bad?,” working in an environment with a moderate level of ambient noise helps people focus on their work rather than external distractions. For those of us who don’t have the luxury of choosing where to work everyday, sites like Coffitivity and RainyMood provide a great way for us to tune into audibly ideal work environments without ever having to leave our own.

To read the full article from the Journal of Consumer Research, follow the link:

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1086/665048?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21101736063543

The largest problem with paper forms for consumers is that, as B2C explains, paper forms are “designed with the worst case in mind and to suit the majority of form fillers’ circumstances. This means that people often have to read through whole sections that are not relevant to them.” The lack of interaction capable with paper forms ensures that customers waste their time reading irrelevant sections, or filling out the same information repeatedly on different pages, unnecessarily. Interactive online forms alleviate this problem by modifying questions asked based on answers already provided on the form. For example, a traditional registration form at a medical office will be multiple pages in length and require you to fill out your name on each page of the document. An interactive form will only require a person to fill out that information once, and will then fill in the fields for each page independently, saving the customer time while ensuring that the office still gets the information it needs in the format it wants. Another example is of a student registration form for a school. Traditionally, these forms ask multiple questions about each guardian: where they work, where they live, their contact information, etc. If the guardian is raising their child alone, or is a single parent, it is unnecessary for them to fill out information about a second guardian, but paper forms include the sections nonetheless. An interactive online form would take note of the fact that the person is a single parent, and would not ask any more questions about other guardians of the child.

The intelligence and interactive capabilities of online forms make the filling out of necessary forms easier and less frustrating for consumers. Interactive online forms save customers time, and simplify a process that can be unnecessarily complicated. Nobody likes to fill out forms, so why make it more frustrating and time consuming than it has to be? Switching to interactive, online forms can lessen the burden and frustrations that paper forms pose for customers. And isn’t making your customers happy pretty important?

To read more from B2C on interactive forms, check out their article on the subject.

The 2013 State of Green Business report has recently been released from GreenBiz, and a worrisome trend has emerged: the hiring of sustainability managers is plateauing. Although the number of companies engaging in sustainability continues to grow, companies have stalled in hiring full-time sustainability managers.

GreenBiz argues in their State of Green Business report that having a sustainability hiring peak in 2009 followed by a hiring plateau  could indicate two worrisome outlooks for sustainable businesses in the future. First, it could indicate that no more large corporations will be jumping onto the sustainability train, and that only the companies already invested in going green will continue to invest in sustainability. Second, it could indicate that corporations investing in sustainability believe that their green practices have or will become ingrained into their business’ strategies, and don’t require a sustainability manager to coordinate sustainability strategies and efforts. The first of those possible explanation is worrisome because it indicates that interest in sustainability may be plateauing among large corporations. The second possible explanation is worrisome because it indicates that businesses don’t fully understand the dynamic, complex environment that is business sustainability.

As the State of Green Business report states, “Customer and societal expectations around sustainability continue to rise in lockstep with the state of the art; yesterday’s best practice is today’s business as usual. And the techniques and technologies that enable companies to achieve sustainability excellence are still unfolding  In this dynamic environment, it’s hard to succeed at sustainability without someone leading the charge…Companies that have demonstrated leadership in sustainability all have a senior executive whose full-time job it is to ensure programs are being conducted as effectively and efficiently as possible. It simply doesn’t happen any other way.” Unless a change is imminent, the hiring plateau of sustainability managers noted by the State of Green Business report foretells of only negative outcomes for sustainable businesses, despite the reasons for the trend.

To read the entire 2013 State of the Green Business report, here’s a link to the full PDF:

http://info.greenbiz.com/rs/greenbizgroup/images/state-green-business-2013.pdf?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonv6%2FKZKXonjHpfsX56OgvWaC3lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4ASMBrI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFSLHEMa5qw7gMXRQ%3D

 
A little bit about the new guy: Matthew was born and raised in Chicago IL, and attended the University of Kansas, where he got a bachelors degree in English. Professionally, he has experience in copywriting, research, and sales: aka, a little bit of everything we need! When he’s not zapping together forms for us, Matthew can be found engrossed in a falafel sandwich, Motown single or a Jayhawk basketball game. On good days he multitasks the triumvirate.

Matthew’s a cool guy that we’re super excited to be welcoming to our team, so if you see him around the KC Startup Village or FormZapper office, be sure to say hey!

The tax season has officially begun! W-2s are coming in, and so begins the yearly process of deciding how and when to file our taxes. Used to be that we’d either head into a brick and mortar shop to find someone to prepare our taxes for us, or we’d spend hours poring over paper forms and receipts cluttering up our kitchen table. Now, more and more of us are making the transition to online tax filing.

Over 80% of Americans filed their taxes online last year, and it’s forecasted that even more will do so in 2013.  Why the change? The reasons vary slightly, but there are a few big ones that seem to hold true for multiple groups: filing taxes electronically is simple, more convenient, and can save taxpayers some serious money.

To provide us with real life examples of people who have saved money by filing their taxes electronically, AOL’s Daily Finance conducted a Savings Experiment documenting persons that have made the switch.  The short clips provide some real life examples of how others saved money filing taxes online that are more real than any large statistic. Using software programs such as TurboTax, persons featured in the videos saved hundreds of dollars by filing their taxes themselves and using various programs to help them find deductions they would have missed had they filed their taxes the old fashioned way, with pen and paper.

To see some of the short videos put together by the Savings Experiment, and get an idea of how people have been saving money by making the digital switch, check out the following clips:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/01/25/frugal-benefits-of-filing-your-taxes-online-savings-experiment/

Research has shown that having a healthy office space with natural light and green plants can reduce stress and increase productivity. Office spaces can sometimes be dreary, boring places. Colored in pale browns and grays, and filled with desks covered in paperwork and machines. For those of us working in cubicles, the daily view is even worse.

Bringing beautiful, green plants into the work space can liven up an otherwise dreary atmosphere, and benefit you and your coworkers in numerous ways. Besides making your desk and office more aesthetically pleasing to look at and be in, plants can help you reduce stress, improve air quality, reduce noise, and reduce dust. The overall effect is an office space that’s prettier, healthier, and more pleasant to be in.

So transplant a lonely green from your personal abode, or adopt a new one from your local nursery, and give it a new home in your office. Your desk and coworkers will be sure to thank you!

To find out more about what types of plants do best in office settings, check out the following articles:

• Gardenista article
• LifeHacker article
• TLC article 
• WebEcoist article

A startup community is developing in Kansas City, drawing entrepreneurs such as FormZapper from all over the metro area. Titled the KC Startup Village, the community is an entrepreneur-led, organic, grassroots initiative helping to bolster the Kansas City startup scene by creating a concentrated and collaborative community of startups. The vision: to solidify Kansas City as a premiere startup city in America.

Startup Communities exist all over the world, in some of the biggest entrepreneurial hubs: Boston, San Francisco, Boulder, Omaha and New York are just a few. According to author Brad Feld of “Startup Communities,” “these types of entrepreneurial ecosystems are driving innovation and small business energy.” Startup communities multiply connections among entrepreneurs, improve access to information and increase the sharing of business ideas and skills.

The Kansas City startup community has been growing steadily over the past few years, with the help of organizations and initiatives such as KC-Next, Silicon Prairie News, the Kauffman Foundation, One Million Cups and LaunchKC. However, as KCSV states in its executive summary, “while the community overall continues to reach new heights, the landscape of the community remains largely disconnected. The general layout of Kansas City itself is sprawling, and thus the members and businesses within the startup community tend to be dispersed and scattered around the city.” Being able to pull together the dispersed startups of Kansas City into a dense, tight-knit community will leverage the strengths of the city’s entrepreneurial talent and connect entrepreneurs so they can learn and grow together.

In Kansas City, the idea of creating such a community is fast becoming a reality. The KC Startup Village has already drawn in 9 startup residents: FormZapper, LocalRuckus, Leap2, RivetCreative, EyeVerify, Rocket Fuel Partners, SquareOffs, Threedee and Trellie. Drawn to the Village by the vision of creating a strong startup community in KC, as well as recieving 1Gpbs internet speeds from Google Fiber, KCSV entrepreneurs are moving to the area quickly.

As a result of being located in the first community to receive Google Fiber, the Village and its members have been receiving a great deal of both local and national press coverage. Institutions and News Networks such as UMKC Bloch School, Fox, NBC, CNN, and the Associated Press are just a few that have featured the KC Startup Village and it’s community members. The attention is great for the community, and is helping to spotlight Kansas City’s developing startup scene as one worth mentioning.

Check out two of the latest articles on KSCV and FormZapper here:

Associated Press Article

University of Missouri Bloch School of Business Article

A 2013 Paperless Campaign has formed, urging small businesses to go paperless in the new year. Google Drive, HelloFax, Manilla, HelloSign, Expensify, Xero and Fujitsu ScanSnap are the companies that make up the Paperless Coalition, and the purpose of their campaign is to “remove the need for paper from paperwork.”

Besides promoting their own tools to help businesses go paperless, the Coalition will be regularly sending out tips and hacks on paperless working via a monthly newsletter, and more regular tweets. Although little information has yet come out from the campaign on exactly what type of information they’ll be sending out, we’re sure much of it will revolve around the types of services the companies in the campaign focus on: paperless billing, accounting software, digital document signing, cloud computing, etc. The promotions that are sure to come from the campaign could get frustrating, but the tips and general information on shifting away from paper co-dependence could still prove valuable to any small business that has made it a goal in 2013 to cut back on office costs, or paper use.

To learn more about the 2013 Paperless Campaign, and sign up for the monthly newsletter, check out the campaign website and submit your email.

Resources:

PCMag Article

VentureBeat Article