Mr. Green is busy on his world-wide publicity tour for his new book. In the meantime, here's a Mr. Green classic column from June 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
I am urging my employer to participate in a paper-recycling program. Can you tell me how many trees would be saved by recycling a 30-gallon bin of paper? —Allan in Houston

As teenagers, my buddy Gordo and I whacked scads of innocent trees with our trusty McCullough chainsaw and shipped them to the mill in Dubuque. So toiling to answer this sort of question is a penance for such sins. Better to do it now than to stew in a vat of boiling pulp in the hereafter, taunted by environmental sermons blaring through raspy amplifiers. Anyway, a 30-gallon bin will generally hold around 80 pounds of computer paper, or up to 100 pounds if the paper is tightly packed.

A typical tree used for pulp yields about 83 pounds of office paper, meaning your bin would essentially hold the equivalent of one tree. Since 10 to 25 percent of the mass gets lost in the paper-recycling process, you might not rescue a whole tree each time you fill a bin, but it's safe to say at least three-fourths of a tree could be saved per container. Now if you throw in a lot of crumpled paper that takes up extra space, you'll obviously fall short of that noble goal.

Of course, trees come in various sizes, and some species yield more pulp than others, so these are ballpark figures. Remember too that all paper is not created equal: Virgin office paper requires twice as much pulp per pound as virgin newsprint. But any way you slice it, recycling paper saves a lot of trees.

Mr. Green is busy on his world-wide publicity tour for his new book. In the meantime, here's a Mr. Green classic column from June 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
Our 800-person office doesn't have a recycling program for beverage containers. We've been told that the empty containers would lure rats and other pests into the building. Do you know how other large companies have solved this problem? —Adam in Indianapolis

The recycling authorities I've contacted have a nice straightforward answer for you: Rinse out your darn bottles, cans, and jars. But even rinsing is not technically necessary. Since the recycling process burns off organic material, dirty containers are mainly a problem when they sit around in hot, humid areas. (If your colleagues are competent enough to keep a tight-fitting lid on the recycling bin, you can get by even in those places without rinsing.)

At the Sierra Club headquarters in cool, foggy San Francisco, that's not an issue, and despite imperfect rinsing habits, we haven't had any pest problems. Not, that is, unless you count the occasional crank caller who informs us we're a bunch of tree-hugging ninnies he'd like to squish under the treads of his ten-ton Hummer.

Of course, pests are not the only issue to consider. Food and beverage remnants can contaminate paper being sorted for recycling in the same facility. (Food waste should be composted anyway.) And think of the hard-working recyclers, sorting your castoffs by hand. As one recycler explains, "We will do our best to recycle a broken glass jar half full of mayonnaise on a hot day, but the spoiled food adds to the challenge."

Podcast: Recycling Paper

"Hey Mr. Green, I asked my employer to start a paper recycling program at work. How many trees would be saved by recycling a 30-gallon bin of paper?"

Click here to listen to the answer!

Hey Mr. Green,
How can I persuade the company I work for, a nationwide restaurant chain, to adopt a recycling program? —Trisha in Cincinnati

Mr Green answers:
Try to start a pilot program in your workplace that other outlets can emulate. The first step is to find out what recycling programs are offered by the city's commercial haulers and what types of waste they take. Then ask if they pick up recycling for free or at a discounted rate. If they do, that'll be a big plus.

Next, try to identify an environmentalist in management, if indeed such a creature exists, and explain how recycling can save money (the economic argument) and help reduce global warming (the moral argument). Also point out that recycling is mighty fine PR. If all else fails, ask permission to set up a program yourself and organize your coworkers to help collect waste and take it to the nearest recycling center.

For more ideas, go to earth911.org and click on "Business Resources" or contact the Green Chamber of Commerce. If your recycling venture succeeds, you can move on to promoting energy conservation with efficient lighting, water heating, and insulation. Then you can kick back and listen to your supervisors gloat about how they're saving money and the environment.

Hey Mr. Green,
I recently spent five months touring the country with the American Shakespeare Center and tried my best to be green on the road. I unplugged the clock, microwave, and fridge and kept my water usage to a minimum. What else can we travelers do? — Kevin in Detroit

Mr Green answers:
Turn the heat down to 68 degrees Fahrenheit or lower in winter (60 degrees when you're sleeping), and in summer, turn the air conditioner off or the thermostat up to 78 or higher. Use towels more than once, and take mass transit when possible for your side trips. If you want to go all-out, turn off the TV. (Having to entertain yourself will also build character and sharpen your acting talent.) Avoid wasting energy in your vacant home by unplugging or shutting off as much as is practical, turning the heat down as low as possible in winter (but not so low that your pipes would freeze), and turning the air conditioner off. If you have a conventional tank water heater, turn it off too. Finally, as Shakespeare himself said, albeit under tragic circumstances, "Put out the light, and then put out the light."

Hey Mr. Green,
My office has four cases of half-liter water bottles delivered each month. Would a water cooler be greener? — Ezra in New York City

Mr. Green answers:
Water coolers aren't just good spots for catching up on the latest office gossip. Those jugs generally get reused, while 80 percent of the 25 billion plastic water bottles manufactured every year (using 1.5 million barrels of oil) are thrown away.

Bottled water is an inspiring example of marketing genius; it might also be the craziest form of privatization yet imagined. We're buying plain old H₂O at hundreds, or even thousands, of times the price of tap water because advertising images of clear mountain springs have us convinced that what's inside plastic containers is purer or healthier than what comes out of the faucet.

In fact, it's generally not. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, more than 25 percent of bottled water sold in the United States is taken from the same public water systems as tap water. And federal standards for bottled water are pretty much the same as for tap; though lead content in bottled water is more strictly monitored, tap water is tested much more often for other contaminants. If you're concerned about the purity of your tap water, check out the EPA's local water-quality reports at epa.gov/safewater. A good certified filter (nsf.org) can take care of most problems at about ten cents per gallon. (If you have well water, however, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautions to get it tested first.)

Filtering your water or refrigerating it overnight in a loosely capped glass or ceramic container will dissipate any chlorine taste or odor, though issues with the flavor may be primarily psychological. In a Good Morning America taste test, New York City tap water beat out bottled water, as it did in other tests I've looked at. So maybe all your office needs is a change of mind-set. For more information, go to sierraclub.org/committees/cac/water/bottled_water