Going Green seems to be the hot phrase these days.  Many people are spreading the word about protecting the planet by being environmentally friendly.

KOLR/KSFX thinks 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.

These 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, KARK-TV.

KARK-TV in Little Rock, Arkansas is one of KOLR/KSFX's 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.  Instead of tossing newspapers, scripts and news 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 fifty million tons of paper annually.  That's the equivalent of 850 million trees.  

Nexstar stations are also looking to reuse 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?'  Now, people ask themselves, 'What's the green thing to do?'" says Rogala.

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.  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.