25 Easy Sustainability Tips to Green your Office.
In January of 2015, I proposed the idea of a Green Team at my work. The building management was very receptive to it and on Earth Day last year one other employee and I launched our first big initiative, streamlining our waste process. My intention for building a Green Team was my love for the Earth and my want to do all I could to help reduce waste in our building and community, with the end result prolonging Mother Earth’s life and resources just a little bit longer for my children and everyone else’s.
The following 25 tips are either ideas our team implemented over the past year or initiatives we hope to roll out this year. If you really love the Earth and want to make a difference, I challenge you to take the following 25 easy things back to your workplace and be the change you want to see in the world. Even if you can only implement a few, that’s where change begins.
Please share anything new and exciting in the comments you are doing at your office if it is not on the list.
Happy Earth Day! I love you Mother Earth!
1. Ditch cubicle trash cans- This is huge! If your office, campus or community does not use a single-stream recycling company (Single Stream meaning everything can go in the garbage and the recycling plant will separate it out) streamlining your office waste system is the best thing you can do. Take all individual cans away from employee desks and place larger cans around the office just for trash, and supply proper paper and bottle/can recycling bins.
Last year, my office saved approximately 50,000 plastic bags from being thrown into the trash just from this one change. This process also ensures proper paper recycling-eliminates possible compliance risks, reduces pests, and ensures bottles and cans are properly recycled. Another awesome benefit is this method gets your employees up and moving around a few extra times a day. Sitting is supposedly the new smoking. In our building of 1200 employees, I calculated that last year employees took approximately 3,000 miles worth of extra steps.
2. Have a Spring Cleaning Day- Whether it’s an employee’s desk or a storage closet, offices collect stuff. Have at least a Spring cleaning Day and maybe a New Year’s cleaning Day, then see idea #3 below on what to do with all the stuff you collect.
3. Create an Office Supplies Recycle Room- If your office performs the cleanings mentioned above you might never have to order certain office supplies again. Find a designated closet in your office, organize all the used supplies and when a new employee is brought on or someone runs out of something, send them to the Recycled Supply closet first to fill supply orders. I guarantee you will cut your spending office supply spending and keep junk out of landfill. Patch or cover torn office chairs also.
4. Work with admins to clean out desks when employees leave or get let go- Set up a system to help admin assistants properly clean out cubicles when employees leave. More than likely when an employee quits or is let go they take the bare minimum and almost always leave a trail of waste in their wake. Use this opportunity to make sure all documents left behind get recycled properly and any supplies the admin’s department doesn’t want or need are properly recycled and used to refill the Recycled Office Supply Room.
5. Purchase reusable dishes that can be used by all departments- I heard this idea at a recycling seminar I attended last year. A school bought 30 full plastic place settings and whenever there was a class event, the teacher of the classroom had to reserve the reusable dinnerware, clean it and return it. By doing this the classes never wasted paper or plastic products at all. Adapt this to your place of work. Never serve bottled water at meetings. Always provide a pitcher and ask employees to bring their own cups.
6. Promote reusable cups and coffee mugs- If you can buy reusable cups or mugs for your employees, that is a plus. Maybe as holiday gifts, you can even brand them. Install water filters on your sinks so they can have fresh water all day long, without having to buy water in plastic bottles. Do you know how much of Earth’s valuable resources are wasted just to get the water to the store for you to buy it?
7. Promote or incentivize commuting by mass transit, bike, walking or carpool. Offer a pre-taxed commuter benefit offering like WageWorks. Not only will your employees save money, but they will save the stress of traffic and wear and tear on the car. Plus, commuting on the bus gives you time to catch up on a book, meditate- like I do — or just stare out the window and not have to worry about being cut off. Offer subsidies for people to purchase bikes or have bikes available for employees to use at lunch. Promote team bike outings.
8. If you have a café on campus, ask for Vegan options or promote a Meatless Monday. Do the same for meetings. Also, promote the use of reusable dinnerware versus “To Go” plastic clam shells and other items which will end up in the landfill.
9. Paper towels- If your office has to use paper towels, place a sticker on the dispenser gently reminding people where the paper to make them came from. Share this video with your employees. It will remind them to conserve at work or anywhere they have to use paper towels. Watch this video and you will never use more than one paper towel at a time again.
10. Hotel supplies- When your employees take business trips have them bring back the unused or slightly used bath products from the hotel. Put a box in the lobby and collect them. Distribute these items to local shelters. Otherwise the hotel will just throw them away.
11. Flushless Urinals- Consider having flush-less urinals in the men’s restrooms. These save thousands of gallons of water a year.
12. Dyson Hand Dryers — The jury is still out on the what is more energy efficient, paper towels or the hand air dryers. I prefer the hand air dryers. No trees involved and no landfill.
13. Use projector for agenda and presentations during meetings.- Do not print out a bunch of copies of handouts that will most likely end up in the trash or the recycle bin.
14. Use a computer or Ipad/Tablet to take notes during meetings. — Save paper while being able to read your notes when you’re done. You will also not have to transcribe any writing if you need to email notes to your team.
15. Telecommute- If a majority of your work is on a computer in a cubicle by your lonesome, convince your supervisor to let you telecommute. This saves money for both the company and the employee. Offerings like telecommuting help retain loyal talent, improves employee morale, saves employees money and helps them to reduce stress by not having to commute. Also more sleep for better performance. I got to see my daughter take her first steps because I was working from home.
16. Video Conference — Different than telecommuting, use video conferencing when holding meetings with colleagues in different offices, cities, states or countries. This alone can save companies a ton of money.
17. Set all printers to Duplex (Print on both sides) and eliminate all confirmation pages — Instruct employees to print double-sided whenever possible and eliminate any confirmation pages when sending faxes from multi-function printers. Instead, have the confirmation pages emailed to your inbox.
18. Require badges or passwords to print- eliminates people printing and not picking up their copies. Setting up your printers to only print out when an employee scans a badge or enters a password helps eliminate compliance risks and also alleviates accidental printing. When employees have to get up to walk to a printer they are less likely to make a mistake. Plus they get a stretch break.
19. Put all lights on timers and use energy efficient light bulbs- Make sure all office and conference room lights are on timer sensors to conserve energy when not in use.
20. Compost- If possible offer composting for organic waste, paper towels, and other compostable office materials.
21. Recycle all can and bottles — Donate the money to local schools or charities.
22. Work with a printer vendor who can give you discounts on cartridge recycling. Or find a vendor who refills or buys back used cartridges. Believe me, there is a lot of money in this industry.
23. Use non-confidential paper as scrap paper — Take stacks of non-confidential paper and staple it together creating recycled notebooks. Use these throughout the office instead of ordering them. I should’ve mentioned this before, but only print when absolutely necessary.
24. Power down your computer — They say powering down your computer totally saves more energy than letting it run all night in power conservation mode. Most modern computers only take a minute or so to boot up nowadays.
25. Make sure your office bathroom faucets are on timers- That way they are not accidentally left on.
If you would like to talk more about ways to make your office “Greener” leave a comment with your contact email and I will get back to you. I love talking about what WE can do to preserve the Earth!
HAVE AN AMAZING EARTH DAY!
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