How to acheive a green office

HugoSP

I've used another post to hilight more ideas.

Sharing of pool cars. Our old company set up a travel database for people to use. My firm had offices all over the country and I frequently shared transport with colleagues visiting the same offices on the same days as me. I once organised an internal interview at the same time one other chap had a meeting.

magyar

Depending on whether your company has regional offices, video conferencing will (a) be more environmentally friendly (b) pay for itself in no time, if used a lot and (c) be safer - the most common cause of serious injury in the workplace is driving on business.

I would say, though, that people usually need quite a lot of encouraging to use it!

amosworks

Definitely split your waste disposal in to confidential (to be shredded)/recycleable (paper, plastics, cans etc)/refuse (for landfill). Then encourage everyone not just to recycle, but to reduce, reuse and then recycle.

Like stop providing company notepads willy-nilly, encourage people to get bundles of scrap and staple them together to make their own. Put up signs near printers and faxes about how many damage is done to the environment with each reem of paper used etc. You could also investigate a fax server, so you can fax a number just as you would use a printer from within your applications, to save you printing it out then faxing the printed paper. It's also possible you can have a digital fax receiving system setup so that you only need print the non-junk faxes, or could even email the JPG's around the workplace instead.

Why not put an actual paper limit on each department so they must be more sparing each week so they don't run out, and if they do then they have to explain to the recycling officer why they went over their limit and get permission for to use another reem etc.

Then there are more drastic ideas like the already mentioned car pooling, solar panels on the roof etc.

The thing is you can't really force people to be environmentally friendly, you can only try and persuade them it's a good thing and offering incentives to do this is definitely an easy way to go about doing that. Maybe the company could offer free tea and biscuits for all departments who are inside their resource limit each week? Try and turn it in to an inter-department competition to see who can be the most green and give them actual money prizes for doing so (after all the company will be saving money too!).

Whatever you do though, bit by bit is definitely the right way to go and try not to force it down people's throats. If you go in all guns blazing, change all the processes and systems and force people to be green telling them you're bad people for hurting the environment, you'll do nothing but create resentment and nobody will want to be involved. In fact you will probably find people being deliberately wasteful to try and make "their point".

True green comes from inside outwards, it's not something that goes down well when done the other way round.

Good luck on your exciting project!
Amos

liz545

Ooh, just thought of another one: if you provide tea and coffee in the office, switch to fairtrade. The cost implications are pretty negligable, I buy our office teabagsand instant coffee through Office Depot/Niceday and the extra cost is minimal; I think other office suppliers, like Viking, stock fairtrade products as well. Just make sure you get the teabags sold in bulk bags, rather than the ones that are individually bagged and tagged! You could even think about organic milk instead of regular, as organic dairies, like Rachel's Organic, promote a much healthier, more sustainable model of farming. HTH!

Savvy_Sue

HugoSP wrote:

I suggested a traffic light system for PCs and other office equipment in an area I used to work.

Green - Switch off whenever not in use - don't just let go into standby mode. EG PCs that employees use etc.
Amber - Refer to instructions on machine. Appliances such as photocopiers may come under this one. You may not wish to switch these off between use otherwise the next person has to wait eons for it to warm up again. However you may want these switched off at the end of the day.
Red - Any equipment that MUST be left on all the time. In my old company that would include test and temperature cycling equipment etc that may be left on to carry out specific functions overnight.

I like it! So much I'm going to get the little sticky dots out of the stationery cupboard on Monday!

Because we have one colleague who's very keen to get us all switching our PCs off at the end of the day, which is great, except that her PC is attached to the colour printer, so if I want anything in colour when she's not there I have to switch it back on again! And there were wails of "I can't save my document!" the other day, because someone who's only just started temping hadn't been told that we store all our documents on the machine she was using, so it should NEVER be switched off until the last person is leaving!

We do have a very good recycling collection service set up at work: we're a small charity so the amount of stuff we produce varies from week to week. These people sell us collection bags, and we sort our recycling into them. When a bag is full, we put it out and they pick them up on a weekly basis. It means we're only paying for WHAT we produce, not a fixed fee. I don't know if they operate all over the country (website doesn't say), but we're in Bristol.

the biggest problem is finding somewhere to keep all the bins for sorting into that's not a breach of Health and Safety guidelines ...

[Deleted User]

mirrorball wrote:

Hi there,

The company I work for has recently decided to introduce an environmental policy and I have just been selected as one of the people on the environmental work team to put some ideas in place. Does anyone have any ideas of what can be introduced ... simple and easy to implement ideas as well as any complex ones? I have some of my own but would love to hear other peoples

The company is a reasonably sized legal firm c500 employees.

My ideas so far are:
Forcing duplex printing on any members of staff not writing to clients
Finding out if wind generated or solar electricity is an option (our building is leased)
Setting up recycling points for printer cartridges and mobile phones
Automatic shutdown of PCs after a certain time
Offering information and incentives for employees to "go green"
Looking into energy efficient lightbulbs

Does anyone have any ideas they could add?

I'm hoping that at least some of the ideas will make some money so that we can donate to a "green" charity or so we can use the money to plant new trees.

The suggestions given above are excellent as are those of mse, but if you really want to get serious you need to consider the work that your firm does outside of the context of the office.

Our office one out of 71 is the first in our company to become ISO14001 accredited.

ISO14001 applies to those environmental aspects which the organization has control and over which it can be expected to have an influence. This therefor runs to work that we do for clients and the way we interact with our clients. Some examples as already mentioned by other mse are video conferencing, to cut down on travel, but also look at whether we can influence clients and the way they are currently working etc.

In essence we put in place an ems (environmental management system) which looks at the aspect of the organization’s overall management structure that addresses immediate and long-term impacts of its products, services and processes on the environment.

I am sure if your firm wishes to get one up on the competition then this would be worth looking into. It does require buy in from all members of staff from senior directors to the office junior and you get externally audited to ensure that your a maintaining and improving your standards.

Its quite a lot of work and would require a champion in the company and I nominate you (it would be a good feather in your cap).

regards Freddix

feesh

I work in a very green and also carbon-neutral office. There are some good suggestions above.

ISO14001 green accreditation is fantastic and can help you win customers (because we are 14001 certified I think we can only use suppliers who are going green themselves, and this movement is growing rapidly).

But ISO14001 is a BIG challenge, even for a green company such as ours where some of our staff are environmentalists anyway.

There is an easier scheme called Acorn which is basically baby steps towards ISO14001 and is specially designed to hand-hold smaller companies without dedicated staff through a 'greening' process. http://www.lrqa.co.uk/productsandservices/environment/acorn/ has more info, as does http://www.iema.net/download/certification/acorn/Acorn%20Recognition%20Scheme%20-%

There is SO much help out there - there are organisations and FUNDING literally tripping over eachother to help companies like yours. Make sure you snap up all the relevant grants.

Your local authority might have some schemes in place, and maybe your local business network (I used to work as an Environment Officer for a council and I attended various meeting groups set up to help companies go green).

You may also have a local energy agency and/or energy efficiency advice centre, both of whom may employ business advisers. http://www.managenergy.net/emap/uk.htm

In terms of carbon/energy your biggest winner will be to make the office as energy efficient as possible.

Once this has been achieved you might think about installing renewable energy or at least switching to a green energy supplier.

On the other environmental issues, try separating your waste and arranging to have it collected separately (you might even get £££ for some of it). Do you have room for a compost bin outside?

There are loads of other random things you can do - we've gone as far as installing a beehive as one of our colleagues is a beekeeper and he gives us honey! We also have landscaped grounds with wildlflowers and a wildlife management plan, and we have a small orchard with native fruit trees.

There is so much you can do but it is almost overwhelming - that's why I think doing something like Acorn will be a real help to you all.

Best of luck and do PM me if you want more info, I might even be able to arrange a guided tour of our offices for you.

HugoSP

How about this?

Your waste bins (that you place non recyclable rubbish in) by your desks use little waste bags that the cleaners remove and replace when they clean the offices - am I right.

Well, part of the scheme could invite employees to bring in carrier bags for reuse in this way. The company in return could donate to charity the saving it makes from not having to buy so many waste bags.

magyar

HugoSP wrote:

How about this?

Your waste bins (that you place non recyclable rubbish in) by your desks use little waste bags that the cleaners remove and replace when they clean the offices - am I right.

Well, part of the scheme could invite employees to bring in carrier bags for reuse in this way. The company in return could donate to charity the saving it makes from not having to buy so many waste bags.

That is such a good idea! I am going to suggest that at our office!

HugoSP

That's the second idea of mine on this thread that's been pinched by someone else other than the OP

I like it. Heres for hoping I can make it a hat trick:)

If you guys have suggestion schemes at work please feel free to get as much mileage out of my ideas as you can!