Today is the first day of Green Office Week in Europe. Apparently one in three office workers don’t do anything to help the environment at work, and Green Office Week aims to raise awareness of environmental issues in the workplace. If you register on the site you can download a lot of promotional stuff – posters and the like – and you can also get yourself a free download of a special Green Office for Dummies pdf ebook. You can also follow the team on Twitter for green tips throughout the week.

Listeners to the Emma and Pete Show will know that Pete and I are big on green issues (probably mid-green, rather than dark green, but we try) and since our home is our office we don’t have the same issues as people who think about the environment at home but are struggling to encourage their colleagues at work to do the same.

We’re currently decluttering the house, and depending on what type of business you work for you might find my recent post on recycling tools to be helpful this week.

We can also provide information on recycling old mobile phones if you’ve got any of those kicking around, find you a good price on an OWL monitor if you want to check up on your electricity consumption, and save you £25 if you want to switch your energy supplier to Good Energy.

We were listening to local radio yesterday morning and there was an advert for a scheme for recycling office furniture and ‘surplus materials’ – essentially a type of freecycle arrangement for businesses. Pete made a note of the URL and it’s Eastex – the National Materials Exchange. They’re operating in a limited number of areas at the moment, but hopefully the idea will grow.

Here at the Emma and Pete Show we’re big fans of all things green, so we’re particularly thrilled to be able to offer you discounted tickets to the green living expo UK AWARE 2010 which is running at Olympia 2 on 16th & 17th April. They’ve expanded onto two floors for this year’s event, which gives them enough space to have an indoor electric cycle track that you can race around, and to display a range of eco-friendly vehicles.

As well as seeing all the green companies who will be taking stands and showcasing their wares, you’ll be able to listen to seminars from greenies, join in workshops and even watch a fashion show and swap your unwanted clothes for something more (or less!) stylish.

And if, like us, you’re trying to run a green business then you can pop along to their Green Business Surgery and ask them questions on how to start, or green up, a business.

Tickets cost £15 on the day, and £10 in advance online, but if you follow Emma and Pete’s magic link you can buy tickets for just £6.

Download the mp3 or click the play button to listen:

Or, listen to this show episode at Mevio.

If you’ve got a job that keeps you on the move, or one that means you need to be constantly available, then the chances are that you keep up with the latest mobile technology. But disposing of old cell phones can be a real environmental problem – most discarded phone handsets end up in landfill where their toxic metal content leaches out and contaminates the land and water supplies. Incineration just sends those same toxins out into the air.

Recycling a handset collects those dangerous materials and turns them into new phones – saving energy in the process and also saving gorillas, because one of the minerals used in mobile phones (coltan) is mined in the Congo and the mining operations are threatening the habitat of the low land gorillas.

So… recycling a mobile phone is a Good Thing, but it’s a bit of a chore, right? What if I told you that recycling your phone could earn you money, or donate money to your favourite good cause – does that make it a bit easier? And in actual fact, recycling can be as simple as popping your phone into an envelope and dropping it in a post box, so I think you’re fresh out of excuses!

If you want to sell your phone (and if it’s a recent model then it could be worth quite a bit of money) then Envirophone are a well established company that offer good prices. You tell them what you have, and they tell you what it’s worth and send out a padded envelope for you to send it in. Once they have it, they’ll send you a cheque or an Argos gift card Simple.

It doesn’t even matter if your phone no longer works or is damaged – they can still recover a lot of the compents and it’s still worth money.

Good causes are also clamouring to get their hands on your old phones, so rifle through those drawers and see whether you’ve got any hanging around. A selection of charities they could support include the Eden Project, Oxfam and The Woodland Trust – all organizations that are working towards a greener world. If you have a large office than Oxfam will arrange a free courier collection for you, so you could encourage your colleagues to bring in all of their defunct phones from home for extra impact.

A quick hunt should turn up local recycling points as well, often helping to fund schools and youth groups.

I saw something in a shop in town the other day. A range of stationery items, all clearly form over function, with a strapline of (or something like): “Make compelling content. Don’t delay.”. Now, forgetting for a moment that I can’t comprehend how little niché stores in big, anonymous shopping centers survive – especially with Oxford’s shocking rent costs – I do like bold statements that work. And I liked this one. I didn’t buy the folder I saw it on, the last thing I need at the moment is even more stationery in an already over-crowded home office (seriously, it’s like we’ve just moved in and haven’t unpacked the boxes).

It’s been playing on my mind for a few days. I need to make that content. It’s what I love to do, and what pays the bills. I do the vast majority of my work online, some of it is mind-crushingly repetitive and boring, but for the large part it’s stimulating and enjoyable. And that’s what life should be, right? Right.

The eternal problem with making this mythical content is being in the right place and mindset to do it. Corporate robots be damned, I need to have the right head on in the morning (or evening, as it seems to be of late) to work my magic. I used to procrastinate like crazy when I was working for The Man – because I could. I was one of the old time folks who could get away with it. It was ultimately my downfall: my brain just got lazy and I wanted out.

Now, I’m in charge of my future, and I love it. Absolutely love it. Not knowing where the next sale is going to be, not knowing if invoices will be paid to us on time (for reference: small business are the worst at not paying bills, large companies are slow, but they get there), the creative spark is the one thing I’m missing – rather, I have to really work to get into the right frame of mind, it doesn’t come naturally. I want it to come more naturally, and I’m confident that it will, with a few changes. More focus, less distraction. The two are closely linked.

The only online distraction I have left is Twitter, and it’s lost the magic it once had. The Twitter love I had just isn’t there any longer. If you prefer a biz term, it’s lost its value. I’m seeing it happen more and more, the latest thing being some lame Moonfruit promotion that seemed to infest every third tweet. I much prefer targeted selling. I’m no angel myself – I’ve used Twitter to get free stuff in the past, in Pavlovian-esque moves I’ve said how wonderful something is for some free software. I’m not proud of it. 300+ people saw me blab how great so-and-so was, and their inconvenience was the price of my free software (plus, I expect, an increase in traffic to the Macheist website). That doesn’t sit well with me.

No blame, no excuses, no more griping, I just don’t feel it any longer. So, I’m hibernating my account. I won’t trash it, I won’t delete the messages. It’ll sit dormant until I restart it. And I will, I imagine, I just don’t know when. My daily online repertoire includes email, making stuff, and Twitter. With some Skype thrown in for good measure now and again. Twitter is the thing that’s at the top of my list that’s slowing me down, distracting me, and stopping me achieve what I want.

If you’re following me: don’t worry – it’s not you, it’s me. Well, maybe it is you, but it’s more likely to be me. Maybe you’d like to start a book on how long I can live without Twitter…I’ll have a ten spot on ‘a month’, thanks.

Since there’s a recession on, the nice people at KashFlow are giving you the chance to upgrade to using their software for free. If you currently use Quickbooks, MYOB or Sage and don’t like it, you can sign up for a KashFlow free trial, send your inferior product off to KashFlow and they’ll give you a year’s KashFlow subscription for free.

The offer is valid until the end of APril 2009, but check the KashFlow blog for the terms and conditions.

Kashflow is cloud computing at its best – an online book-keeping tool that’s perfect for keeping small businesses on the straight and narrow. You don’t have to be a genuis book-keeper to use it, either, because it’s all very straightforward. Because Kashflow runs in a web browser, it works on any operating system without any compatibility issues. And if you have an eBay business, or receive a lot of PayPal payments, then you can also get a special API that hooks your PayPal account into Kashflow and makes keeping your accounts up-to-date a doddle.

You can sign up for a free 60-day trial with Kashflow via their website, and if you enter the discount code AFF2100647 when you sign up (or you can do it later, when you confirm your subscription) then you’ll save £1 a month on the fees, for as long as you use Kashflow.

Today is the first day of Green Office Week in Europe. Apparently one in three office workers don’t do anything to help the environment at work, and Green Office Week aims to raise awareness of environmental issues in the workplace. If you register on the site you can download a lot of promotional stuff – posters and the like – and you can also get yourself a free download of a special Green Office for Dummies pdf ebook. You can also follow the team on Twitter for green tips throughout the week.

Listeners to the Emma and Pete Show will know that Pete and I are big on green issues (probably mid-green, rather than dark green, but we try) and since our home is our office we don’t have the same issues as people who think about the environment at home but are struggling to encourage their colleagues at work to do the same.

We’re currently decluttering the house, and depending on what type of business you work for you might find my recent post on recycling tools to be helpful this week.

We can also provide information on recycling old mobile phones if you’ve got any of those kicking around, find you a good price on an OWL monitor if you want to check up on your electricity consumption, and save you £25 if you want to switch your energy supplier to Good Energy.

We were listening to local radio yesterday morning and there was an advert for a scheme for recycling office furniture and ‘surplus materials’ – essentially a type of freecycle arrangement for businesses. Pete made a note of the URL and it’s Eastex – the National Materials Exchange. They’re operating in a limited number of areas at the moment, but hopefully the idea will grow.

Here at the Emma and Pete Show we’re big fans of all things green, so we’re particularly thrilled to be able to offer you discounted tickets to the green living expo UK AWARE 2010 which is running at Olympia 2 on 16th & 17th April. They’ve expanded onto two floors for this year’s event, which gives them enough space to have an indoor electric cycle track that you can race around, and to display a range of eco-friendly vehicles.

As well as seeing all the green companies who will be taking stands and showcasing their wares, you’ll be able to listen to seminars from greenies, join in workshops and even watch a fashion show and swap your unwanted clothes for something more (or less!) stylish.

And if, like us, you’re trying to run a green business then you can pop along to their Green Business Surgery and ask them questions on how to start, or green up, a business.

Tickets cost £15 on the day, and £10 in advance online, but if you follow Emma and Pete’s magic link you can buy tickets for just £6.

Download the mp3 or click the play button to listen:

Or, listen to this show episode at Mevio.

If you’ve got a job that keeps you on the move, or one that means you need to be constantly available, then the chances are that you keep up with the latest mobile technology. But disposing of old cell phones can be a real environmental problem – most discarded phone handsets end up in landfill where their toxic metal content leaches out and contaminates the land and water supplies. Incineration just sends those same toxins out into the air.

Recycling a handset collects those dangerous materials and turns them into new phones – saving energy in the process and also saving gorillas, because one of the minerals used in mobile phones (coltan) is mined in the Congo and the mining operations are threatening the habitat of the low land gorillas.

So… recycling a mobile phone is a Good Thing, but it’s a bit of a chore, right? What if I told you that recycling your phone could earn you money, or donate money to your favourite good cause – does that make it a bit easier? And in actual fact, recycling can be as simple as popping your phone into an envelope and dropping it in a post box, so I think you’re fresh out of excuses!

If you want to sell your phone (and if it’s a recent model then it could be worth quite a bit of money) then Envirophone are a well established company that offer good prices. You tell them what you have, and they tell you what it’s worth and send out a padded envelope for you to send it in. Once they have it, they’ll send you a cheque or an Argos gift card Simple.

It doesn’t even matter if your phone no longer works or is damaged – they can still recover a lot of the compents and it’s still worth money.

Good causes are also clamouring to get their hands on your old phones, so rifle through those drawers and see whether you’ve got any hanging around. A selection of charities they could support include the Eden Project, Oxfam and The Woodland Trust – all organizations that are working towards a greener world. If you have a large office than Oxfam will arrange a free courier collection for you, so you could encourage your colleagues to bring in all of their defunct phones from home for extra impact.

A quick hunt should turn up local recycling points as well, often helping to fund schools and youth groups.

I saw something in a shop in town the other day. A range of stationery items, all clearly form over function, with a strapline of (or something like): “Make compelling content. Don’t delay.”. Now, forgetting for a moment that I can’t comprehend how little niché stores in big, anonymous shopping centers survive – especially with Oxford’s shocking rent costs – I do like bold statements that work. And I liked this one. I didn’t buy the folder I saw it on, the last thing I need at the moment is even more stationery in an already over-crowded home office (seriously, it’s like we’ve just moved in and haven’t unpacked the boxes).

It’s been playing on my mind for a few days. I need to make that content. It’s what I love to do, and what pays the bills. I do the vast majority of my work online, some of it is mind-crushingly repetitive and boring, but for the large part it’s stimulating and enjoyable. And that’s what life should be, right? Right.

The eternal problem with making this mythical content is being in the right place and mindset to do it. Corporate robots be damned, I need to have the right head on in the morning (or evening, as it seems to be of late) to work my magic. I used to procrastinate like crazy when I was working for The Man – because I could. I was one of the old time folks who could get away with it. It was ultimately my downfall: my brain just got lazy and I wanted out.

Now, I’m in charge of my future, and I love it. Absolutely love it. Not knowing where the next sale is going to be, not knowing if invoices will be paid to us on time (for reference: small business are the worst at not paying bills, large companies are slow, but they get there), the creative spark is the one thing I’m missing – rather, I have to really work to get into the right frame of mind, it doesn’t come naturally. I want it to come more naturally, and I’m confident that it will, with a few changes. More focus, less distraction. The two are closely linked.

The only online distraction I have left is Twitter, and it’s lost the magic it once had. The Twitter love I had just isn’t there any longer. If you prefer a biz term, it’s lost its value. I’m seeing it happen more and more, the latest thing being some lame Moonfruit promotion that seemed to infest every third tweet. I much prefer targeted selling. I’m no angel myself – I’ve used Twitter to get free stuff in the past, in Pavlovian-esque moves I’ve said how wonderful something is for some free software. I’m not proud of it. 300+ people saw me blab how great so-and-so was, and their inconvenience was the price of my free software (plus, I expect, an increase in traffic to the Macheist website). That doesn’t sit well with me.

No blame, no excuses, no more griping, I just don’t feel it any longer. So, I’m hibernating my account. I won’t trash it, I won’t delete the messages. It’ll sit dormant until I restart it. And I will, I imagine, I just don’t know when. My daily online repertoire includes email, making stuff, and Twitter. With some Skype thrown in for good measure now and again. Twitter is the thing that’s at the top of my list that’s slowing me down, distracting me, and stopping me achieve what I want.

If you’re following me: don’t worry – it’s not you, it’s me. Well, maybe it is you, but it’s more likely to be me. Maybe you’d like to start a book on how long I can live without Twitter…I’ll have a ten spot on ‘a month’, thanks.

Since there’s a recession on, the nice people at KashFlow are giving you the chance to upgrade to using their software for free. If you currently use Quickbooks, MYOB or Sage and don’t like it, you can sign up for a KashFlow free trial, send your inferior product off to KashFlow and they’ll give you a year’s KashFlow subscription for free.

The offer is valid until the end of APril 2009, but check the KashFlow blog for the terms and conditions.

Kashflow is cloud computing at its best – an online book-keeping tool that’s perfect for keeping small businesses on the straight and narrow. You don’t have to be a genuis book-keeper to use it, either, because it’s all very straightforward. Because Kashflow runs in a web browser, it works on any operating system without any compatibility issues. And if you have an eBay business, or receive a lot of PayPal payments, then you can also get a special API that hooks your PayPal account into Kashflow and makes keeping your accounts up-to-date a doddle.

You can sign up for a free 60-day trial with Kashflow via their website, and if you enter the discount code AFF2100647 when you sign up (or you can do it later, when you confirm your subscription) then you’ll save £1 a month on the fees, for as long as you use Kashflow.