Building an Environmentally Friendly Office
Consuming less energy in the office...
With the threat of global warming looming large, every environmentally-friendly action makes a difference, whether at home or at work. Considering most people spend the major portion of their day in the office, taking steps to conserve natural resources and consume less energy in the office can make a huge impact on the environment.
If you own the office, great! You can go all out and make your office environmentally friendly in every possible way. Owning just a cubicle in the office does not make you any less important. There’s a lot that every individual can do to make the office environmentally friendly.
- Turn your computer off if you expect to be away from your desk for an extended period of time, whether it is for the day or even if you are just going off for lunch. If everyone just shut down their computer when it was not in use, that in itself would add up to huge energy savings every month.
- Keep the lights switched on only in rooms that are being used. If the conference room is going to be used later in the evening, the lights do not need to be switched on all day long. Putting the lights and the air conditioning on just a few minutes prior to the conference will more than suffice the purpose.
- Replace old bulbs with the new energy saving bulbs that not only save energy, but also last eight times longer than ordinary light bulbs.
- Reuse and recycle whenever you can. Buy envelope reuse labels and use them on old envelopes for internal circulation. Use notice boards to inform staff of meetings rather than individual reminders and memos. If you have to use paper, encourage the use of recycled paper for office circulation. Make notepads out of scrap paper.
- Instead of using disposable Styrofoam or paper cups at coffee machines and water filters, ask each employee to carry their own cup or mug.
- Solar powered calculators are a fantastic energy saving alternative to calculators that are battery operated.
- Equip your office with appliances that are Energy Star certified including monitors, copiers and vending machines.
- Get all office equipment serviced regularly to ensure they are working as efficiently as you’d like them to.
- Install controls on individual radiators so that the temperature in each room can be individually controlled.
- Placing a few plants in your office will make it come alive and it is healthy too. If you do not have any open windows in your office, get a few indoor plants that do not require direct sunlight to thrive.
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