In today’s world, being green is getting easier and easier. Recycling bins are becoming more common, more restaurants are offering cloth napkins instead of paper, and you can easily fix up your house to make it more energy efficient. Being green saves you a lot of money over time, up to thousands of dollars.
Making your office green is easier than you’d think. There are several small things you can do to save the environment while saving your company money.
Turn off the lights.
This is the simplest step in going green. If a room isn’t in use, make sure the lights are off. If you are leaving the office for the day, flip the light switch off. Even during the day, utilize sunlight whenever possible. Keep half the lights off at all time, and you will save big on your electric bill. Since computers are the main tool for offices these days, use the light given off by the screens.
This is also a great tip because employees may suffer headaches from constant fluorescent light. Keeping at least some of the lights off will relieve headaches and make sure your employees are comfortable.
Use recycled materials.
Almost everything can be recycled and reused these days. There are lots of ways to reduce waste in your office space. First, make sure your printers are set to print on both sides of the paper, and keep a big recycling bin next to the printer and copier. This ensures that employees won’t needlessly throw away paper.
Second, reuse cardboard boxes for shipping and pack them with shredded waste paper. You can save cost on shipping this way, and those annoying packing peanuts won’t stick to anything when you use shredded paper.
Thirdly, use remanufactured ink and toner cartridges. These cost an average of 15% less than new ones. One returned cartridge keeps 2.5 pounds of metal and plastic out of landfills, and one toner cartridge preserves a half a gallon of oil. These are just a few ways to recycle around the office.
Cut down on office transport.
It may be irritating, but it’s incredible how much energy and gas can be saved by carpooling, taking the bus, biking, and walking to work. You’ve heard it preached, pitched, and pronounced at you for years, but it hasn’t changed that condensing your commute helps both the environment and you.
There is now software that matches up employees for carpool, according to where they live. This saves the trouble of personally mapping it out, and different employees can drive on different days, or just give one driver money for gas. Also, providing incentives, such as closer parking spaces, will encourage carpoolers.
You can also institute a work-from-home policy. Now that we have advances telecommunication and video conferencing, employees can easily work from home without missing anything. You can even conduct meetings from your own home.
Digitize.
Here in the Digital Age, we still use an awful lot of paper. Eliminating a paper trail will save so much money in the long run as well as the environment. Keep files on computers instead of in folders and cabinets. Send emails with notifications and announcements instead of paper letters. Review documents online.
Installing expense tracking software is also a great way to digitize. Keep track of everything without paper or printing. This kind of software uses web-based timesheets, employee paystubs, applicant tracking, and access to benefits and such. Data storage online can hold so much more than cabinets can, and you will have access to everything immediately. This makes it convenient to save the environment.
In order to do our part, we as businesses can instill green values in our employees and companies. By saving money, we can save the environment. Going green not only adds these benefits, it adds convenience, too.
Sara Stricker has written dozens of articles, and bounces from topic to topic as the day goes by.