Practical Tips to Make Your Office Environmentally Friendly

Reuse, recycle

• Reuse envelopes for internal circulation and buy envelope reuse labels, these can be purchased with company logos on
• Invest in solar powered calculators rather than battery operated
• Consider using re-usable items rather than disposable, for example, china cups, metal cutlery, propelling pencils, refillable pens
• Collect stamps and milk bottle tops for charity
• Use notice boards rather than circulating non-urgent memo's
• Use products with a longer life, such as low energy light bulbs, which last up to eight times longer than ordinary light bulbs and also reduce energy costs
• Turn scrap paper into notepads
• Use both sides of paper when photocopying or producing reports

Tips for purchasing for the office

• Specify products with a recycled or reconditioned content. For wooden furniture and other timber products this may include purchasing goods from certified, sustainable sources
• Avoid buying disposable products and aerosols
• Use solvent-free correction fluids and paints
• Choose local products and materials to reduce energy and pollution implications of transporting goods
• Avoid over-packaged goods
• Specify upgradeable PCs
• Use refillable pens and highlighters
• Share items in occasional use, eg. highlighters & hole punchers
• Consider teleworking and home-working schemes

Tips for saving energy in the office:

• Position desks and workstations to make best use of natural light
• Check for and quickly repair leaks and dripping taps
• Only boil the required amount of water in a kettle
• Service heating systems regularly
• Improve insulations & Draught proofing
• Only heat work areas that are being used
• Fit controls to radiators to regulate individual room temperatures
• Use low energy lighting and appliances
• Switch off lights & machines when not in use
• Reduce lighting levels in areas such as corridors where bright lighting is not required
• Consider other energy saving measures such as timers and sensors

Plants ARE Good for Offices!

Common indoor plants may provide a valuable weapon in the fight against rising levels of indoor air pollution. Those plants in your office or home are not only decorative, but NASA scientists are finding them to be surprisingly useful in absorbing potentially harmful gases and cleaning the air inside modern buildings.

NASA and the Associated Landscape Contractors of America (ALCA) have announced the findings of a 2-year study that suggest a sophisticated pollution-absorbing device: the common indoor plant.

Top 10 plants most effective in removing:
formaldehyde, benzene, and carbon monoxide from the air.

Getting Staff to Participate

Continual promotion is key to a successful program. Your fellow office workers will participate if they are well-informed about the program and its benefits. Explain the recycling process and how they can participate by collecting recyclables and by using products made from recycled materials. The support of your CEO or senior management is vitally important!

An effective promotional campaign includes:

Kick-off memo:

A memorandum signed by your CEO and directed to all employees, highlighting the benefits of recycling and describing the program, is a good way to start your program.

Education and Promotional Sessions:

The kick-off memo should be supplemented by brief presentations to all employees. The "do's and don'ts" of the program and its benefits should be explained and questions answered. (Stickers with lists of what goes into each bin may be available from your recycler and are helpful informational tools.) Remember: Information on your recycling program should be included as part of the orientation of new employees.

Reinforcement and Follow-up:

It is important to reinforce the new recycling habit. Keep employees informed of your company's recycling efforts, highlight new recycled products that are purchased, participation rates, quantities of waste paper that are collected, revenue earned, disposal cost savings, and any problems encountered and/or solved in company memos or newsletters. Seek suggestions for program improvement.

A successful program requires time and effort to familiarize the employees and the custodial staff with the recycling program's objectives and requirements. Employees won't participate if they don't know how the program works.

Close the Loop - Buy Recycled and Recyclable Products

Office paper collection is not enough. Remember recycling also requires: the purchase of recycled content products. Quite simply, recycling is the process of remanufacturing one end product (that would otherwise be thrown away) into another useful product. If the demand for these products is reliable and significant, more competitively priced recycled products will be produced and you will have played your part in creating markets for the paper you've collected.

Every business, individual and government office must take an active role in buying products that are made from recycled paper. This means standard business papers like stationery, envelopes, newsletters and publications, copy paper, fax paper, corrugated boxes, tissue products...and many more! When making purchases for your office, it is also important to make sure that all of the paper you purchase can be recycled as a part of your office recycling program. Example: To purchase yellow legal pads when you have a white paper collection program is inappropriate. If you collect recyclable paper, but do not purchase recycled products, you discourage manufacturers of recycled products and contribute to the flooding of the waste paper market and discourage office paper recycling in the long run. Conversely, to purchase recycled paper products, but not to collect recyclable waste paper can assure recycled products to be more expensive than necessary. We must all work on closing the loop on recycling by committing to both the collection of recyclable waste paper and the procurement of recycled paper products. Recycling works only if marketable products can be made from collected materials.

By buying recycled paper products for your office, you join a growing number of businesses, institutions and government agencies who are helping complete the recycling loop. The more organizations that are willing to Buy Recycled, the more recycled products will be manufactured.

You can be proud to know that every time you buy recycled paper products you demonstrate your commitment to the environment, save landfill space and set an example for other institutions to Buy Recycled, too.

Source – www.crazycolour.com