Green your workplace

Key things to make a difference to the energy efficiency of your workplace:

The efficiency of your buildings (insulation and energy efficient equipment) and the way your premises are managed (providing recycling, good building maintenance) are vital to reducing carbon emissions generated by your business.

Another important factor is the behaviour of the people using your buildings. Even if a building is low energy and has environmental facilities, a lot of energy can still be wasted if people are not aware of the impacts their actions have on the environment and for instance leave the lights, monitors and copiers on all night.

Simple ways to address staff behaviour are to:

have no bins by desks
organise a separate recyclables collection which people know how to use
buy recycled (e.g. paper, print cartridges)

The following are suggestions for additional ways you can influence the behaviour of your colleagues, inspiring them to take more green actions and make their office a really green place to work.

Set up a green action team

What you can do:

Get a project team together (3 - 5 staff members including someone from facilities/caretaker depending on the size of your organisation)
Agree a specific and realistictarget for the team, e.g. increased recycling rates and other energy-saving behaviours such as switching off monitors, lights etc
Secure management support. One-on-one meetings are a good way to do this
Launch your initiative with a green quiz (or engaging/ fun activity) at an all-staff meeting. After the quiz tell people about the project, what you do and how you will do it. (Examples of quiz questions: #1 How many lunches could you microwave with the amount of power that a computer monitor uses if you leave it on overnight? Answer 6; #2 How many trees did Friends of the Earth save last year by recycling all of its waste paper? Answer: 118)
Help everyone join in the first green action by putting up green facts and tips around the building
Ask staff to volunteer to be a ‘green ambassador' for their floor or team. They can lead by example and help other staff
Update staff on a regular basis at staff meetings or through a staff newsletter
Use the launch momentum to get the next action going (eg reward staff with a small fair trade chocolate bar for switching off their monitor or a branded cloth bag for not bringing in plastic bags)
Run green inductions for new staff members and volunteers, i.e. one of the project team members explains the green actions such as printing or recycling facilities to a group of new staff
Make the green induction open to existing staff members

Think before you print

Producing 1 tonne of recycled paper saves at least 30,000 litres of water, 3000 - 4000 KWh electricity (enough for an average 3 bedroom house for one year) and

95 % of air pollution than producing paper from virgin fibres.

What you can do:

Switch from virgin paper to recycled paper (Paperback provides all sorts of green office products, see details below)
Get your IT team to set computers to double-sided printing as default
Set your photocopier to produce double-sided copies
Consider whether you really need to print every email and document. Are there some that you can read on-screen? Your Green Action Team could put up signs saying: ‘Think before you print, do you really need to print or photocopy?'
Reuse paper that has only been used on one side for printing or scrap paper
Collect your waste paper including cardboard, newspapers and magazines and recycle it. Organisations such as Paper Round or your local authority can help you organise collections
Reuse envelopes as much as you can (open them cleanly) - Paperback can provide you with reuse labels

You may need to set up recycling facilities on each of your office floors (e.g. in kitchen area), with separate containers for white paper, mixed paper, mixed glass, cans and aluminium foil. Plastic containers with PEP 1 + 2 marks (triangle on bottom indicates type of plastic) are recyclable. Paper Round is one of the leading recycling companies that can help you with this (see details below).

The more you reduce the amount of waste your office is producing, the more money you can save and the greener your business becomes.

Cut energy bills and switch to a green energy supplier

What you can do:

Switch off lights when you leave a room and the office in the evening. Lighting an empty office of an average size overnight wastes enough energy to heat water for 1000 cups of coffee
Turning off your monitor when you leave your desk even for 10 minutes, and encouraging 20 others to do the same, can save one tonne of carbon dioxide emissions in an hour - employees who left their computers on overnight cost their companies £90 million in 2002
Make sure that the last person switches off the photocopier when leaving the office at night. A photocopier left on overnight uses enough energy to print 1500 laser copies
Switch to energy saving light bulbs. They use less than a quarter of the electricity of incandescent bulbs and can last up to 12 times longer
Switch to a green energy supplier (see details below)

Think train before plane

What you can do:

1. Inspire your staff members to find the greenest way to travel to work. Can you offer a season ticket loan or bicycle loan?

2. Provide a bike shed or other safe place to park bikes

3. Review your work travel policy and make sure that travel for meetings is as low carbon as possible. Use ‘green' taxi firms that drive low carbon cars such as Green Tomato (see details below) if taking public transport is not possible

4. Encourage staff to travel by train or bus

5. Do you really need to travel to so many meetings? Make conference calls and get videoconferencing set up to avoid the trip - you will save a lot of money on flight tickets

6. If you do need to travel, try taking the train to Europe instead of flying short-haul.

Treat blue gold like a treasure

What you can do

If you make tea or coffee, only heat as much water as you need. It saves water and energy. The green action team could mark your kettles to show how much water is needed according to how many cups of tea you are making
If you have ‘old' (non-dual flush) toilet systems put ‘hippos' in water cisterns to reduce the amount of water used for each flush. Thames Water provides these free. If you cannot install hippos simply fill up a plastic bottle and place one into each cistern
If replacing toilets opt for dual-flush systems. You can save up to 5 litres of water per flush
When taps need replacing, replace them with low water flow controls such as spray taps

Less plastic, less chemicals

Get rid of chemical-laden cleaning products (e.g. washing-up liquid and hand soap) and replace them with more eco friendly products such as Ecover
Order products that can be refilled to reduce the amount of plastic used - Ecover also provides refillable containers - zero waste and 20 per cent reduced costs