We live in increasingly energy conscious times. As a result businesses come under pressure to make the day to day functioning of their company as sustainable as possible. From simple email footnotes that read – do you really need to print this email – to switching off computer terminals and plug sockets at the end of each day, there are a multitude of ways to reduce your company’s carbon footprint.
1. Reuse and Recycle
Many companies leap to recycling which is by no means a bad thing, however take a moment and think whether some of the materials might be reused first? This is wholly dependent on the nature of your business but is worth pursuing in order to streamline your recycling and minimize over all landfill. Recycling is becoming easier and easier. Most office blocks now have to have a system in place and even if yours doesn’t, it’s very easy to purchase some cheap bins and label them, paper, metal, plastic.
2. Tech to Reduce Energy Consumption
Before you invest in energy saving bulbs and new fans try pulling up the blinds rather than turning lights on and open the windows to get some air into your office. Lighting accounts for about 30% of power consumed by offices so cut your utilities bills by switching lights off. Energy saving light bulbs are an excellent investment, switch from incandescent to fluorescent and you’ll not only make your office greener, but you’ll save your business money too.
Energy saving computers are becoming more affordable whilst retaining high performance levels. Manufacturers such as Dell, Sony and Apple are all investing research and development time into advancing their eco range of computers so you don’t have to sacrifice processing power for sustainability.
3. Mobilize Your Workforce
Mobile workforce solutions can benefit many industries, such as trade services. But this technology is also being implemented in forward thinking offices and revolutionizing departments such as IT, human resources and finance. Paper based procedures are being streamlined, employees are able to work remotely, and mobile applications allow for dynamic date capture so that information can be recorded and accessed from anywhere in the world.
4. Save Water
Year on year offices use colossal amounts of water but if employees can get into the mindset of using a little less every day then massive amounts can be saved. Whether it’s simply from filling up the kettle to the exact amount needed therefore saving both water and the energy used to boil it, to encouraging the owner of the office to install timers on taps and urinals, as well as duel flush toilets, which save 6 liters of water per flush.
5. Turn that Switch Off
The majority of electricals, think computers, laptops, phone chargers and stereo systems, have a sly standby mode so even if they’re switched off they will still be consuming electricity and siphoning energy even when not in use. Turn them off at the source too, at the plug socket to ensure there’s no energy being used by some seemingly dormant equipment. Over the months this will not only make your office greener but it will cut your bills dramatically too. The boss will love that!
Banner photo by Rupert Ganzer
Turning the lights off when you are not in your office is something we instil in to everyone in our company, especially the conference room, and when people go out for lunch. We also open the front and back door of the office when the weather permits, along with a couple of windows to save of the a/c whenever we can. Likewise, on the rare occasions when it does get cold, we keep the blinds open to let the sun in, which does actually help heat some of our offices. As you reference in your final point, we also make sure everyone turns their computer off at the end of the day, because it used to be standard practice to keep them on overnight in case any updates needed to download, but we sorted that issue from ever happening again, and make sure any updates occur during working hours.
We have a chance right here at home, here in Canada, to get totally green with our monthly electrical expenses with regard to lighting alone. Home or industry can save hundreds to thousands per every newly retrofitted or replaced light/lamp source over the course of the lifetime of the bulb or light.
Just released and patented a new cutting edge lighting retrofit kit. It is a high efficient energy saving LED technology for the office or industry. You basically get back your initial energy investment in 2-3 years; with a money savings of 50-60%; and, an energy and luminescent efficiency of over 1000% over conventional light bulbs and florescent lighting. The lifetime of the LED bulbs and LED lights range from an absolute minimum of 50,000-100,000 hours of usage, to that figure, to maybe even double that amount.
Cutting edge technology is now available to retrofit or install LED lighting everywhere…the question is…are we at the right time and place; or, is the market still not ready to spend first and save second?
I’ll send you the link to the article that I am working on; introducing this newly developed and patented retrofit kits to the Ontario industrial market. And, I’ll give you the inside scoop on what the average consumer and business owner thinks of this new technology and energy savings bonanza. Their website is still being worked on as I write. I can guarantee you one thing; It will be the next BIG thing in office and industry energy savings!
Stay tuned…
Well, I guess the real problem is that employees just don’t care! Most of the people don’t care about green-living and just think of saving energy when they have to pay it. I’m from germany and we some cool programs going on here.
There are companies that organize competitions and funny games to make their employees aware of the energy consumption. The people can win prices and have a motivation to save electricity, and it also benefits the working athmosphere!
That’s exactly the biggest problem of all green efforts. People have to be aware and we need some ways to make them care! Raise your children with a green attitude, hopefully the next generations will be wiser than we are.