"Going green" seems to be the hot phrase these days.

Many people are spreading the word about protecting the planet by being environmentally friendly.

We think it's a good message.

Over the course of the next year we're going to bring you stories about the simple things we can all do to make a difference.

Tthese days it seems everything is tinged green. Schools are being built to specific environmental standards. Weddings are being thrown with mother earth in mind. Having an environmentally friendly lifestyle no longer means just putting up solar panels or collecting rain water. Your neighborhood hardware store is starting to look more like nasa than a nut and bolt shop. And reduce, reuse and recycle is really starting to mean something.

Anyone who works at a television station can tell you, putting on several newscasts a day takes a lot of paper. "We talked about... when we actually added up the amount of paper, we were embarrassed," says Rick Rogala of WKAR-TV in Little Rock Arkansas. It's one of our sister stations. We're all part of the Nexstar Broadcasting Group. We felt that if we were to deliver the green message… we should practice what we preach.

Our first step was to initiate an active recycling program. Iinstead of tossing newspapers, scripts and press releases in the trash... they have a new home in the recycling bin. Television stations do use a lot of paper, but we aren't alone. Americans use 50 million tons of paper annually. That's the equivilent of 850 million trees. Nexstar stations are also looking to re-use aluminum.

"We run in cycles where we've done things one way for so long that we don't challenge ourselves enough to say what's the right thing to do? and now people ask themselves what's the green thing to do", Rogala said. Conserving energy is also part of the process. Which means at the end of the day, computers should be shut-down, and lights switched off.
We think that if we all do the little things… we can make a big difference. Hopefully we'll be able to leave this planet a better place for future generations.