More and more employees are working from home these days as both individuals and companies look to decrease costs incurred from travel and the pricey rental of office space. Having a home office is convenient, economical and a great way to reduce the impact made on the environment.

Finding eco-alternatives to home or office technology may not be as challenging as many people think. These days, many companies make it easy to get what you need without wasting valuable money, energy and resources.

Here are a few tips on how to go green with your home and office technology.

Look For Natural Light
When looking for a place to set up your home office, choose a place that has plenty of natural light. Not only is sunlight better than energy-sucking tube lights, it also puts less strain on eyes and even helps put you in a better, more productive mood. Even if it isn’t realistic for you to set up an office with wall-to-wall windows or pepper your ceiling with skylights, choose a space in your home that receives ample light.

Dual-Purpose Resources
Instead of using electronic calculators for your finance needs, use the power of the sun or your overhead lights. Solar calculators are a simple way to make the most of the resources you use every day. Using overhead light to power your calculator uses less energy than an electronic calculator and entails less waste than a battery-powered version.

Consider Your Furniture
Instead of purchasing a cheaply made desk apt to end up in the garbage dump five years from now, invest in good-quality, solid-wood furniture. Products made from particleboard are not only not built to last, but they also emit eco-unfriendly gases. Look at thrift stores and consignment shops where a well-made piece of furniture can be found inexpensively. Taking the extra time to find something you love not only means a purchase that will last a lifetime, but it may also make going to work each day a little more pleasant.

Use the Real Green
Adding a little bit of foliage to your office will create a healthier environment. Plants absorb many air pollutants such as formaldehyde and carbon monoxide by storing them in their roots and transforming them into less hazardous gases. Areca palm and peace lily are some good choices for decorating your office and effectively filtering your air.

Provide Green Backup
Keeping files backed up on a USB flash drive has become a standard practice. Traditionally, many drives feature plastic, metal or leather accents. Now, however, bamboo, a renewable resource and the fastest-growing plant on Earth, can help protect your removable drive. In engineering tests, the tensile strength of bamboo is higher than several alloys of steel, making the bamboo flash drive a simple, sturdy solution for green digital file storage.

Save Your Power
An eco surge protector conserves energy and saves you money at the same time. A master outlet lets one device be plugged into the surge protector and have unidirectional control over the rest. That means when the device plugged in to the master outlet shuts down or idles, the additional devices are also shut off to reduce energy waste.

To keep energy consumption–and your bill–low, you will need to use the right products and practice green habits. Consider upgrading older equipment that may eat up a lot of electricity with products that are ENERGY STAR® qualified. Many new products today give you everything you need to perform well while also saving you energy and money.

For example, HP offers many ENERGY STAR®-qualified products, including the HP Officejet Pro 8500 printer, which reduces costs and energy consumption by 50 percent compared to many laser printers, and can save even more when you use the duplexing feature to save paper. You’ll be glad you went green when you look at your next electric bill.

Recycling
Printer cartridges have special recycling requirements. Many office supply stores now offer recycling programs that make it easy to recycle ink and toner cartridges.

Print In Green
Find a printer with an ENERGY STAR rating that uses energy-efficient technologies. Printers, for example, provide environmentally responsible printing solutions, including power-saving settings and automatic double-sided printing.

Print Responsibly
You will need to print–from presentations and customer documents to drafts you need to proofread. Printing can help you work efficiently, put your best foot forward and can give you a break from staring at your computer monitor all day. To go green, the key is to print responsibly and print right the first time to avoid wasteful reprints. There are some great tools out there that will help you do just that. When printing content from the Internet, use Smart Web Printing (www.smartwebprinting.com), a free Internet application that allows you to collect, select and combine content from multiple Web sites so you can print exactly what you want without wasting paper. Don’t forget to print on both sides of a sheet whenever possible. Many printers come with a duplexing feature, or you can simply flip the page when printing as well.

It only takes a few adjustments to start making a meaningful impact to the environment. Not only will you be doing your part to save the planet, but you’ll also feel good about saving a little green in your wallet.