For those who work in office buildings, these spaces become like a home away from home. While you may be doing your best to live sustainably, you may be wondering if your office could be greener. Whether you are managing the day to day operations of the office, or are a concerned employee wanting to enact change, there are several ways to encourage greener business practices and reduce your company’s environmental footprint.
- Switch to paperless
One of the simplest ways to reduce waste and energy use in an office is through ditching printed memos and documents whenever possible, and moving to sending these documents electronically. This is also a great way to save an office money.
- Check your lightbulbs
To cut down on energy use, we suggest switching out your incandescent lights with LED bulbs, which are more efficient, longer lasting, and will cut down the office’s energy bill.
- Carpooling incentives
While this isn’t strictly inside the office, creating a carpooling program can help to reduce emissions created by employees traveling to work. You can create incentives such as rewards or make it a competition with prizes to encourage participation.
- Ditch the single use plastics
Replace single use utensils, plates, cups, and cookware with reusable ones, and watch as the amount of waste generated in the office kitchen drops drastically.
- Unplug the energy vampires
With a lot of technological equipment constantly in use in an office setting, energy use is a large contributor to an office’s footprint. Make sure that once items are not in use, employees unplug them rather than just turn them off; if they aren’t unplugged, they may still be draining energy.
- Add office plants
A great way to improve air quality in an office is to add house plants around the building. This often leads to increased productivity, too.
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