Aside from your home, your office or your place of employment is probably the place where you spend the most amount of time. And considering you probably work with at least a handful of coworkers, if not hundreds more, your group efforts when it comes to being more energy efficient and environmentally-friendly as an office can have a significant impact. Here are some ways you can help lead the charge to make your office more sustainable.
Turn off lights in unused rooms
There are likely several rooms in your office, including conference rooms that only get used a handful of times throughout the day. Make a habit of keeping the lights off in rooms that aren’t being used to conserve energy and electricity. Every time you leave a meeting, turn off the lights as you exit. And make sure that every night, everything gets turned off: including lights, computers, and all other electronics that can be draining useless energy overnight. Not only will your office become more sustainable, but your monthly energy bill will decrease too.
Turn down the thermostat
Turning down the thermostat is a simple change with a potentially vast impact. A constantly running thermostat, especially at high temperatures can be an energy suck – especially when we tend to “set it and forget it,” like when everyone leaves the office to go home for the night. Even turning down the temperature by anywhere from 3 to 10 degrees can have a big impact. And employees can easily make up the difference of those extra degrees by keeping a sweater or sweatshirt at their desk. Just make sure to discourage personal space heaters, which can be an energy suck as well as a safety hazard.
Plus, keeping the office cooler may have a positive impact on office productivity. Warmer temperatures are proven to incite sluggishness and sleepiness, so a slightly cooler office temperature may help to produce the opposite effect.
Go paperless when possible
Another big change you can make in the office to improve sustainability is reducing paper use as much as possible. There are certain things that always have to be printed out, like contracts, but try to think twice before mindlessly printing. Will an email suffice? Can you go completely digital? It’s probably more of a habit shift than anything else, and some slight tweaks can make a big difference in how much paper you are using on a day to day basis.
It’s not hard to embrace more sustainable office practices, but if you think you need some help, seek out some expert help to get you started. In addition, you can always work with Electricity Companies to find more renewable energy solutions, or find another way to make a significant change to your energy usage. The key to making sustainability changes is consistency – come up with some changes that your office can commit to as a team, spread the word about the changes and the benefits of making them, and stick with them. You can even implement company culture initiatives to reward employees for practicing them!
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