Saving the Earth cannot be done all at once, but rather one baby step at a time. While buying organic products (for example) might not save the greenery of our polluted world, implementing this idea into the road towards developing an environmental consciousness is a small, yet vital part of its green pavement. It is advisable that you change your general way of thinking when it comes to being environmentally unaware, and your office is no exception. We’ve outlined 5 suggestions on how to go green in your professional life.
Transportation
Everyone knows traffic brings a huge deal of negative impact on the environment; in fact, the largest amount of pollution within the traffic itself happens during rush hours, which are caused by people commuting to and from work. If you set your mind to it, you will realize there is a variety of options and solutions to this problem out there. For example, people tend to avoid biking to work because they don’t want to remain sweaty and smelly for the rest of their workday. You could encourage your employees to bike to work by installing showers within your office space, perhaps even by providing them with company bicycles. Not only will this help take the air pollution down a couple of notches, but it might provide you with a great marketing opportunity, seeing as how you can use this means of transportation for commercials as well.
Lighting
Wasting unnecessary amounts of energy is not only harmful to the environment, but to your finances as well. Keep your pockets turned the right side in, while remaining green, by following these reasonable tips:
- Switch to fluorescent bulbs – not only do they last longer, but take up much less energy
- Make use of the natural lighting as much as you can – big windows and skylights are the name of the game here
- Install motion-sensitive hallway and entrance lights
Paper
Paper is an unavoidable cog in any company. No matter if it’s IT-based or if it specializes in meat packing – it will need paper at some point. With this in mind, the fact that paper production puts somewhat of a strain onto the environment is common knowledge. Acres of rain forests have been cut down over the course of the last couple of centuries, in order to supply everyone with paper, be they tree-hugging writers and painters, or heads of large corporations. Here are some general guidelines on how to dwindle the environmental impact when it comes to paper:
- Buy chlorine-free paper exclusively
- Always use both sides of a sheet
- Ebb away from color printing or use green toner cartridges
- Opt for alternative paper (hemp, bamboo, organic cotton)
- Keep as much documents possible on you company’s cloud
- Always prefer emails over sending hard copies
Computers
Computers are an unavoidable part of almost every company out there. However, there are ways to dial down the energy wasting a couple of notches in this department. Screen-savers do save screens, but not the environment. By setting standby modes (both for screens as well as computers themselves) to a shorter time period, you are helping conserve a great deal of energy. Additionally, make sure your company desktop devices are well-maintained and upgraded regularly, seeing as how outdated parts not only tend to devour more power as time goes by, but the new advances in technology allow for more environmentally-conscious computer components.
These five tips can tremendously help you achieve the goal of green, but this is not to say that there aren’t many more ways out there to help save our planet from our own selves. Feel free to explore a bit and don’t refrain from adding some ideas of your own to the list.
