Working from home is already a head start towards “greening” your business. It reduces pollution as well as time spent stuck in traffic. You can always do more – there’s a wide range of methods to further green your workplace.
Here are five tips to get you started, from the very basic to the unusual. All will help reduce waste while saving energy, trees, and ultimately, money.
1. GET PAPER SMART
Recycle your wastepaper – This is one of the easiest and quickest changes to make. Many major centers now have curbside recycling programs. Check online for your municipal waste & recycling services, or seek out the nearest recycling depot.
Go electronic – It’s simple: print less often (which has the added benefit of reducing clutter). Read on-screen, send electronic copies of documents whenever possible, and print only when necessary.
Buy recycled – Most paper out there now has at least 30 per cent post-consumer content. Dig a little harder for 100 per cent recycled paper, which typically costs only slightly more.
2. REDUCE THE JUICE
Replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents or older fluorescents with energy-efficient fixtures. A 25-watt compact fluorescent bulb produces about as much light as a 100-watt conventional bulb but uses only one-quarter of the electricity. That’s the equivalent of 100 less pounds of carbon dioxide per year.
Your computer consumes more juice than it needs to – Activate the power management settings on your computers, allowing them to enter “sleep” mode when not in use. Use an energy-efficient monitor. Set your screen saver to “none” or “blank screen.”
Plug your office equipment into a power bar – A computer running 24 hours a day can use up to $120 of electricity every year. Turn off lights and computers at night or when you leave the room. Not rocket science here, but cost-effective and easy.
3. GREEN OFFICE DEPOT
If you haven’t already, consider a laptop for your next computer – Laptops use about one-tenth the electricity of a desktop, and their convenience and portability are practical for outside business meetings and mompreneurs on the go.
Choose eco-friendly – Water-based correction fluids, pens and markers are safer and better for the environment than their solvent-based predecessors. Choose reusable and refillable products instead of disposables. Replace your water cooler with a quality filtration unit. Bottled water, even in five gallon quantities, isn’t a good deal and in many cases, the quality of filtered tap water exceeds that of bottles.
Go green when you clean your office – Swapping chemical cleaning agents for non- or less-toxic natural equivalents can go a long way, especially with little ones running around.
4. IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS THAT COUNT
Set your thermostat lower by a few degrees in the winter and higher by a few degrees in the summer. For every 1 degree Fahrenheit reduction you make in the winter, three per cent in total energy use can be saved. Consider purchasing an adjustable thermostat, which can be programmed to reduce energy output overnight. Keep your blinds open in the winter and closed in the summer to reduce the load on your temperature system.
Speaking of little things, 47 per cent of households have at least one broken or out-of-date cellular phone. An equal number have dead batteries, chargers or outmoded, broken cameras, and 37 per cent have empty ink cartridges. Recycle these at your local office supply store or municipal recycling center.
5. THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX
Add a wind turbine – Residential wind generators can lower your electric bill by as much as 80 per cent. On blustery days, it can sometimes generate more electricity than needed, spinning the meter backwards— essentially selling electricity back to the grid.
5 Comments
Hi Karen
Great article! A few other green ideas for your office!
When you get new logo or change your biz details that you require new letterhead and/or business cards you can re-use the old letterhead as scrap paper in your office (the kids love it for drawing to!). If your business cards were one-sided print you can use those in place of yellow sticky notes! Sure they don’t stick, but you are saving lots of wasted paper! (kids love to use them to “play” clients too!)
To prevent this problem in the future make sure you do smaller print runs of letterhead and business cards if that is cost effective for you.
If you are printing information (say an e-book or website articles or something of that nature) that doesn’t really need to be on new pristine paper, feed your recycled paper into your printer and print on the unused side.
Hi Karen
Great article! A few other green ideas for your office!
When you get new logo or change your biz details that you require new letterhead and/or business cards you can re-use the old letterhead as scrap paper in your office (the kids love it for drawing to!). If your business cards were one-sided print you can use those in place of yellow sticky notes! Sure they don't stick, but you are saving lots of wasted paper! (kids love to use them to “play” clients too!)
To prevent this problem in the future make sure you do smaller print runs of letterhead and business cards if that is cost effective for you.
If you are printing information (say an e-book or website articles or something of that nature) that doesn't really need to be on new pristine paper, feed your recycled paper into your printer and print on the unused side.
Great tips Karen. I don’t even buy most of the paper I use. I know a girl who hates to throw away paper if one side is still good, so she would collect it at work and use it as scrap paper. When I worked with her, I started bringing it home and using it in my printer. Now that I have my own business, I still go up there and collect paper. There isn’t much I need to print on quality paper. I also use this paper to make my grocery lists, tic tac toe, rough drafts of school work and thousands of other uses. I help the environment and don’t spend a penny.
Also, I think electronic fax services are good for saving on electricity, space, paper, and landfills. I wrote a review about different online fax services here: http://bit.ly/d07x6X.
And, lastly to save money, I use re-manufactured ink and swear by it! And I have a review about the companies I use (2 different printers) for ink: http://bit.ly/5CWXCW
Great tips Karen. I don't even buy most of the paper I use. I know a girl who hates to throw away paper if one side is still good, so she would collect it at work and use it as scrap paper. When I worked with her, I started bringing it home and using it in my printer. Now that I have my own business, I still go up there and collect paper. There isn't much I need to print on quality paper. I also use this paper to make my grocery lists, tic tac toe, rough drafts of school work and thousands of other uses. I help the environment and don't spend a penny.
Also, I think electronic fax services are good for saving on electricity, space, paper, and landfills. I wrote a review about different online fax services here: http://bit.ly/d07x6X.
And, lastly to save money, I use re-manufactured ink and swear by it! And I have a review about the companies I use (2 different printers) for ink: http://bit.ly/5CWXCW
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