A recent invention that has been given the green light by eco-warriors and thrifty householders alike, is a small water meter shaped like a pebble. Costing under £10, the pebble sits in your shower, recording the amount of water you use per wash. Then, through a system of traffic lights, it tells you when you're using more than average and gradually cuts down the time until the amber or red lights come on. Cutting a shower from 22.5l to 18l uses one third less energy, but you probably won't even notice.

And then there's the eco-friendly computer button. The button eliminates inefficiency of most computers by allowing you to press it once to switch them into their most efficient mode. It connects to your computer via a standard USB port, and is an illuminated reminder of how easy it can be to save electricity. To waken your computer from its ecoslumber, you only have to press one key and it will instantly come back to life. The ecobutton manufacturer claims that it can save you up to £50 per year.

We can all do our bit in the office. One area in all of our working environments that can be reviewed is paper usage. Who, these days, does not recycle, for example? And when it comes to using less paper, a single multifunction devise covering the functions of printer, copier and scanner will also use less energy.

One of Scotland's largest local authorities, for example, was aiming for a 30% reduction in overall print volume and £95,000 of savings by the end of last year. The authority signed a five-year contract which will see the total number of printers reduced from 161 standalone desktop and network printers, and fax machines, to 36 multifunction devices that provide printer, copier and scanning functions in a single unit. It expects, over five years, to make the savings on electricity, consumables and paper just by revising this print practice and changing to a single, multi-function device.

And if you use Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2010 you can certainly do your bit by thinking before printing. PowerPoint allows you to create notes pages, or printed pages that display author notes beneath the slide that the notes accompany as you build your presentation. You can print these notes and review them as you deliver your presentation, but there is no need to if you're conscious on using paper. Before printing notes pages, consider viewing your notes in Presenter View. You can view these notes as you deliver your presentation on a second monitor, and this will help to conserve paper and printer ink.

Have a look at the notes pane, the pane in normal view in which you type notes that you want to accompany a slide. You can print notes as notes pages or have them display when you save a presentation as a web page. Use normal view to write notes about your slides. You can type and format your notes as you work in normal view, but to see how your notes pages will print and to see the full effect of any text formatting, such as font colors, switch to notes page view. You can also check and change the headers and footers of your notes in notes page view. Each notes page shows a slide thumbnail, along with the notes that go with that slide. In notes page view, you can embellish your notes with charts, pictures, tables, or other illustrations.

Pictures and objects that you add in notes page view appear on your printed notes page, but not on your screen in normal view. If you save your presentation as a web page, pictures and objects do not appear when you display your presentation in the Web browser, although your notes do. Changes, additions, and deletions that you make on a notes page apply only to that notes page and to the note text in normal view. If you want to enlarge, reposition, or format the slide image area or notes area, make your changes in notes page view. You can't draw or place pictures in the notes pane in normal view. Switch to notes page view and draw or add the picture there.

To add art, such as a shape or picture or to format all of the notes pages in your presentation, change the notes master. This is handy if you need to put a company logo or other piece of artwork on all of your notes pages, add the art to the notes master. Or, if you want to change the font style for all notes, change the style on the notes master. You can change the look and position of the slide area, notes area, headers, footers, page numbers, and date.

If you save your presentation as a web page, your notes are automatically displayed unless you choose to hide them. The slide titles become a table of contents in the presentation, and your slide notes appear beneath each slide. Your notes can fill the role of the speaker, giving your audience the background and details that a speaker would provide during a live presentation. If you don't want your notes to be displayed on the web page, you can turn them off before you save the file.

You can print your notes pages with a slide thumbnail to hand out to your audience or to help you prepare for your presentation. And you can print only one slide thumbnail with notes per page when printing notes pages. To do this, open your presentation, then click the Microsoft Office button, click the arrow next to print, and then click print Ppreview. In the page setup group, click the arrow under the print what box, and then click notes pages. To specify the page orientation, click the arrow under orientation, and then click portrait or landscape. To set headers and footers, click options, and then click header and footer and click print. If you prefer, you can print notes pages without slide thumbnails.

With organisations making savings up to 30% off of their consumable usage, maybe it's time you had a look at how PowerPoint could help cut down your office outgoings.