Going Green in your Office - Why its Good for Your Wallet and the Environment
No matter what business you may be running, going green is an important step that we should all think about making. It is not only very important for environmental conservation, but it is also important for the conservation of your resources, decreasing the amount of wastage your company produces. By aiming to go green and making your processes more efficient, you could indeed increase profits and have a nice eco-friendly story to help you acquire new business.
Some simple steps that can help lead you to a greener future are fairly obvious things such as ensuring that all unused office equipment is properly powered down – not just left on standby! In addition to this, it is wise to ensure that all PC’s, printers and monitors are properly shut down every night when you are finished for the work, and during the day turning off your monitor when you are away from the desk will help your efforts. This will help lower your electricity bills, as well as lowering ambient temperature in the office decreasing the amount of work that your air conditioners are required to do.
If you are willing to invest in your green credentials, then fitting solar technology to your office can help save significant amounts of electricity – technologies such as solar tubes (natural sun powered light replacement) and photovoltaic arrays (to generate electricity) are gaining popularity, and more importantly getting more efficient by the month.
You should encourage your staff to lean toward a paperless mentality, if that’s not possible then you should implement the following tips to decrease your paper usage.
- Use an electronic Fax service instead of the old paper based method.
- Set up reminders on everybody’s email reminding them to only print the email if it absolutely necessary.
- Set your printer to full duplex (both sides) printing by default.
- Consider implementing a paper less invoicing system if you are sending a lot of invoices out in the post.
Consider your suppliers carefully. If there is a green alternative for your standard office consumables such as pencils, notepads, and office stationary then it would be wise, if the cost doesn’t prohibit, it to use the eco friendly choice.
Outside of the office needn’t be out of bounds for someone trying to help the environment – help staff understand the health benefits and fuel saving associated with a cycle to work scheme. It’s coming into the summer and you should definitely be encouraging your staff to make the effort to cycle, walk or if unavoidable car-share into the place of work.
The important thing to remember when beginning to go green is ‘baby-steps’. You aren7t expected to be super eco-friendly from day one, but with some of the simple steps listed above you can certainly start to make some baby steps to a greener business.
Do you have any great idea’s about how one can increase their green side in an office -environment? Why not leave a comment below – I would love to hear your ideas.
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[Image Credit: business.com]
Citations:
This eco friendly article was written using 100% recycled electrons, by Stephen Rendell - owner of super green invoice software company Paper Free Billing.
