While some companies become more sustainable by overhauling their workplaces into state-of-the-art, ecotastic offices, most businesses don’t have the money or the ability to do that. Instead, we must try to green the spaces that we have, which are often decades-old buildings with drafty windows and aging HVAC systems. Fortunately, there are plenty of long-term changes that your company can make to become more sustainable – without affecting their business practices or breaking the bank. In that vein, we’ve outlined below 6 simple ways that almost every company can implement to reduce its carbon footprint.
Evaluate your current carbon consumption
You can evaluate your company’s carbon consumption in a day either by hiring an expert or getting an emissions-conscious office manager to do the review. It’s important to assess where you currently stand in order to know how you can improve. By benchmarking the present number of greenhouse gases generated, you will be able to develop an appropriate strategy to follow.
Give your office an energy upgrade
These don’t have to be expensive upgrades, but instead can be simple tasks like investing in good blinds and shading, upgrading your windows, conducting maintenance on your office’s central heating system, and switching to energy-saving light bulbs. Replace your old, inefficient incandescent light bulbs with LED bulbs to save your company both electricity and money.
Turn off and unplug
Get the members of your team into the habit of switching everything off at the end of the day and implement energy saving modes on everyone’s computers and monitors. Before you head home, make sure all of your office lights, equipment, kettles, and microwaves are turned off fully – by this, we mean switching off the plug sockets. More often than not, electrical equipment siphons power when in it’s in standby mode – so to ensure there is none wasted, switch them off and unplug at the wall. This will not only reduce your consumption, but also your electricity bills. Throughout the work day, make sure that all computers are set to “energy saver” mode. This makes the machines turn off their monitors and go to sleep more quickly when not in use — not have a bright screen constantly glowing can save a lot of energy.
very simple and doable
Good tips! I work from home and while I don’t have an actual office, my brother manages a small company and I’m sure he’ll put these tips to good use. Good deal guys, thanks!
Juan Miguel Ruiz
http://www.GreenJoyment.com