The idea of the traditional office is stripped of its formal essentials and needs to be reinvented to be a dynamic, adaptable, versatile, and enthusiastic space encouraging advancement and imagination in employees. From altering the office’s lighting framework to the types of office supplies, there are hundreds of things that can be done to make office more green.
Offices apart from serving its purpose of a work environment, offices need to be evocative enough to change the perception of how offices are looked at. Before learning about the ways to make office more green, we need to understand why do we need to do it.
The 3 R’s to make office more green:
The best way to make office more green is to follow the three important “R’s” – reduce, reuse, and recycle. By practicing the 3Rs, we can effectively decrease the amount of waste an office produces, which results in overall savings and cost reductions. Here are simple ways by which you can reduce, reuse, and recycle in your office.
To make office more green, you don’t have to spend higher costs for your office. When you practice more sustainable practices, you will realize why being good to the environment is also beneficial for you.
A. REDUCE – By eliminating the generation of waste
Make office more green by adopting reduction practices
- Buying office supplies in bulk saves on the per-unit cost and reduces the generation of waste by using less packaging material.
- “Go paperless” by instead of distributing hard copies, documents can be stored digitally.
- When it is necessary to print you can save up to 50% of the paper cost by making the default setting of printer to double-sided printing.
- Consider using words “high-efficiency” or “high-capacity” to denote bulk-sized items which will lower your per-print cost.
- Conserve toner and ink by using the draft and save-toner modes for prints.
- Using the staircase instead of elevators must be encouraged in workplaces.
B. REUSE- Reuse as much as you can!
The second step to make office more green is to reuse the items.
- Practice reusing binders and file folders instead of throwing them after one use.
- Consider reusable cups instead of plastics water bottles or plastic glasses.
C. RECYCLING- When waste cannot be reduced and reuse, go for recycling
Last but the most important step to make office more green is to go recycling.
- Return toner bottles and cartridges for recycling.
- Split the trash produced into the three different categories and dispose of them in recycling bins instead of the regular bins.
- Use recycled paper and recycle the used paper. Recycling of paper saves trees, energy, chemicals, and water.
- Keep a recycling bin at each desk to make it easy to collect used paper.
[Read How to make a garden look more beautiful?]
Reduction and conservation of resources to make the office more green is always a wise thing to do. Apart from these, by making a mini-terrace garden, manage a patch of land by planting trees you can contribute your bit to the environment and can make office more green and visually appealing.
Going green is not only great for the environment but will also strengthen your brand name.
Happy Working!