Whether you run an entire office or are just the king of your cubicle, there are some pretty easy things that you can do to help make your work space a more environmentally place.
Since it looks like being green is here to stay, it’s probably about time that you jumped on the bandwagon and took advantage of some simple ways to help reduce your office’s carbon footprint:
Turn off your computer when you leave for the day. Unless you’re planning on coming back in the middle of the night and you absolutely have to have your computer already up and running, go ahead and power down for the night.
Turn off the lights in common areas once everyone leaves. There’s no point in leaving the light on in the copy room if it’s going to sit unused for 13 or 14 hours each night. Same goes for every other common area in your office.
Get some small indoor plants. If you’re lucky enough to have an office with a window, most any plant should do ok. However, if you don’t have a window, make sure you do a little bit of research and check out which plants can survive in your office without lots of direct sunlight.- Use Energy Star certified equipment. From your monitor, to your copier to the vending machines in the lunchroom, make sure that all of the equipment you use in the office is Energy Star certified.
- Start a recycling program. Get some plastic, glass and aluminum bins for the lunch room, and put recycling boxes in printing rooms. It’s pretty easy to do and it might even show that you have some initiative. That being said, you’re going to want to make sure that you don’t recycle company sensitive information; you’ll definitely want to shred that instead.
Don’t print if you don’t have to. The biggest use of trees is for paper, so theoretically, if we reduce the amount of paper we use, we’ll reduce the amount of trees that get cut down. And if you have to use a ton of paper, go the green route and buy recycled office paper.
Bring in a coffee mug. Instead of getting a new styrofoam or disposable cup each day, bring in a regular coffee mug from home and just rinse it out at the end of each day. This is a great and simple way to reduce needless trash.
While this certainly isn’t the be all, end all of ways you can make your office more environmentally friendly, this list is a pretty good place to start. And the best part is, doing many of these things won’t really put you out or force you to change too many habits.
I know it sounds pretty cliche, but if each of us would do just a couple of small things to reduce our impact, we could probably do a lot to help stave off the global environmental crisis.
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