8 Ways to Make Your Workplace Eco-Friendly
8 Ways to Make Your Workplace Eco-Friendly
More and more companies and businesses across several sectors and industries worldwide are aiming to reduce their carbon footprint and the impact they create on the environment. Governments are also getting together to encourage them. The COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in Glasgow this year, where world leaders got together to address climate issues and accelerate action towards the 2015 Paris Agreement. They developed the Glasgow Climate Pact, which is the first climate agreement that plans to reduce coal usage.
Due to consistent efforts by activists and governments, environmentally-conscious workplaces have become the latest trend. Companies are putting in policies and programs that encourage green and sustainable behaviours. If you wish to hop on the bandwagon, continue reading this article for eight ways to make your workplace more eco-friendly and create a culture of sustainability.
1. Create a Green Team
Before you put eco-friendly behaviours into practice, you need to increase awareness regarding your company’s sustainability goals. The best way to do this is to form a ‘green team’ internally. A green team comprising dedicated individuals who care about the environment will be able to come up with creative ways to tackle serious environmental concerns.
When forming a green team, try to have at least one senior management representative on the team that everyone else can report to. If you’re from, or have a bigger organisation, it may be wise to encourage staff from all organisational levels to join the team because sustainability is a joint effort. Each time your green team accomplishes a goal, publicly recognise their efforts and thank them for a job well done.
2. Conserve Energy
One of the best ways to encourage environmentally friendly office practices is to teach your employees the importance of conserving energy. Set an example by turning off the lights, heating/cooling equipment, electronic devices and appliances around premises during off-hours or where there are no staff working. Encourage your employees to do the same. This will help to conserve energy and lower your company’s electric and gas bills, especially in the current Covid climate of ever-increasing, sky-high energy bills from both electric and gas suppliers with oil, gas, and energy prices both for consumers and business currently at an all-time high in the UK and Ireland.
The global wholesale energy prices have increased drastically because economies are recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, plus political wranglings with the likes of Russia over their energy supplies. During Autumn 2021, the energy prices saw double-digit growth with a 70% price increase in August 2021 alone. The global demand and supply have affected power generation in the UK, and companies like Electric Ireland, SSE Airtricity, Power NI, and Bright Energy (to name a few) all increased their prices this year between June and October.
To create a culture of sustainability, ensure you develop and communicate a policy regarding reducing energy consumption. Provide frequent suggestions such as shutting off PC or Mac computers at the end of the day and keeping the lights off when a meeting or work room is unoccupied within your offices.
If you want to develop yourselves as a sustainable company, invest in renewable energy sources like solar and wind energy. Even external security lighting now uses either mains-powered, low-wattage LED (which can be 1/10th of the cost to run compared to Halogens) or Solar-powered Security LED lights with motion sensors are so cheap now, don’t need a professional Electrician to install and for the better models now last for years.
3. Encourage Green Commuting in the Covid era
Encourage your employees to lower carbon dioxide emissions from transport by walking, cycling, or carpooling to work. Suggest to them to take public transportation instead of driving their vehicles to the office. Offer incentives to motivate them to do this. However, remember that wearing a face covering or mask on all public transport is still a legal requirement within the UK, so they must carry your face mask or covering with them at all times, with the FFP2-type masks (that sit out from the face) providing the only real protection for their wearer and others, for the majority of the public, as they provide a tight, yet comfortable seal around the face, compared to the very cheap blue disposable masks which provide very little if any protection to the wearer, although do a reasonable job of reducing the projection of droplets from the wearer to others around them. Plastic visors provide zero benefit for anyone though, so should be avoided.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, several companies have developed work-from-home policies that also help reduce the carbon footprint. In the UK, an average person spends an average of 49 minutes commuting each day. Work-from-home opportunities will reduce the amount of total time spent traveling to and from work.
4. Think about Your Food Choices
When equipping the kitchen at your workplace, buy products with bulk pack opton, it will save your company money overall as well as reduce its carbon footprint. If there’s only a few of you, consider getting food from the same place, preferably locally. Encourage your employees to go vegetarian or vegan since cattle are one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.
It is also a good idea to replace disposable plastic or paper cups with reusable water bottles, or china mugs that can be re-filled from time to time. Many workers like to grab tea or coffee during the day while working or during their break, so encourage them to limit their consumption. The caffeine-based coffee consumption within the UK is two cups of full coffee earlier in the day and definitely not six hours before bedtime. Switch to Decaffinated variants from mid-afternoon and into the evening. Your body will thank you with better sleeping patterns.
5. Reduce, Reuse and Recycle
One of the best ways to make your workplace eco-friendly is to change the way you recycle! This means more than just throwing used paper in the recycling bin. Before you even think about recycling, consider whether you need certain items in the first place.
For example, do you really need disposable plastic or paper cups by the water dispenser, or can you use reusable cups or bottles instead? Do you need bottled water, when filter jug using tap water and then served from a proper glass would do the same thing. Do you need a sugar-filled fizzy drink from an Aluminium can every day (most contain about 50-55g of Sugar per can (depending on the brand, and whether “Diet”-branded or not. Sugar intake is recommended as 80g maximum intake per day, so you do the maths on that). Do you have to use just one side of the paper, or can you laser printers print/write on both sides (point 6)? Can you take an extra 30 seconds to wash out the soup tin and recycle it instead of just throwing it in the dustbin? What about the soup packet’s box? Did you recycle it?
There are many ways in which you can reduce your waste or reuse and recycle items. It‘s all about developing a different approach to the waste created in the workplace.
6. Be Conscious of Your Printing Practices
Green companies encourage double-sided printing – an option that is available in most of the laser printers available today.
Instead of printing and posting documents, send them electronically. Many virtual options don’t require you to print on paper to send to recipients. You can even use apps to put or get e-signatures on important documents without needing any paper at all. If you need to send documents to your partners, clients, or other stakeholders, send them in eco-friendly padded envelopes from Trade Printing UK that are 100% recyclable and biodegradable.
7. Add Indoor Plants
If you want to encourage sustainability and improve the air quality and aesthetics of your office at the same time, bring in some leafy plants! Indoor plants are a great way to enhance the quality of air. We spend a great deal of our time indoors, so the cleaner the air we breathe in, the better our health will be. Poor air quality can adversely affect our health and lead to complicated medical conditions such as asthma attacks, lung cancer, and respiratory diseases, let alone not helping Covid guidelines.
Spider plants, Peace lilies, Chinese evergreens, and English Ivy plants are common indoor plants that filter the air, absorbing harmful toxins found indoors such as carbon monoxide, benzene, formaldehyde, and trichloroethylene, while distributing clean oxygen. They are also very easy to maintain. Just remember to water when required.
8. Increase Vitamin D
If your office has tall windows that allow plenty of sunlight to shine throughout the day, consider switching off the lights and boosting the natural light during the daytime. Not only will this help conserve energy, but it will also reduce emissions.
According to Forbes, employees who work in sunlit spaces feel up to 6% more productive and 15% more creative than those who don’t. This is because sunlight is vital for our body’s circadian rhythms that control everything from our moods to our digestive system.
Placing workspaces within ten feet of a window can also dramatically decrease the number of employees who suffer from blurred vision, eyestrain, and frequent headaches. In a study from Cornell, researchers found that a simple three metre shift towards the window resulted in a whopping 84% decrease in reported symptoms of visual conditions.
Providing access to sufficient natural light is one of the best environmentally friendly office practices. It can boost employee productivity and protect their well-being. However, there might be darker internal corridor areas or rooms inside the fabric of your building that will require artificial lighting even during the daytime. In these areas, replace your light bulbs with LED lights that use considerably less energy.
For Eco-Friendly Materials for Your Workplace, Contact Trade Printing UK
The best ways to make your workplace eco-friendly involve investing in sustainable alternatives to everyday products. We understand that eliminating the use of paper is not possible. Hence, at Trade Printing UK, we have developed eco-friendly options for standard printing materials and office stationery. Call us at 028 9084 1234 to learn more about our products and services.