5 Simple Tips For Making Your Workplace Eco-Friendly
Climate change is real, and scientists have already stated that the whole world is already in a climate crisis. The rising number of floods, earthquakes, and forest fires indicates that mother nature has had enough.
Though large fuel companies are significant contributors to CO2 emissions, your workplace can help protect the environment with some simple changes.
From saving water, reusing different items to tetra pak recycling, there are numerous ways your workplace can head towards becoming eco-friendly.
If you are responsible for making such decisions for your company, here are five simple tips for an eco-friendly workplace.
Support local eco-conscious businesses
It’s always good to support local businesses. If some local companies are actively working towards environmental sustainability, you should help them by sourcing products from them.
You can switch to recycled paper from your local vendor. If you frequently host lunches and dinners, you can support a catering service that uses only local products from local farmers.
Remove plasticware from the office pantry and cafeteria
Plastic coffee and water cups are significant contributors to corporate plastic use. If your office uses them too, you can encourage your employees to use their own coffee mugs and reusable water bottles to avoid plastic use. It will not only help your workplace to become greener but save a significant amount of money too.
You should also remove plastic straws and other cutlery from the pantry. They are highly polluting and dangerous for wildlife. You can also provide dishware like office mugs with your company logo to improve your brand awareness too.
Promote recycling
You may not realize, but every workplace produces a tremendous amount of wastage every day. From plastic packaging tapes to printing papers, numerous items can be recycled. Even the cafeterias have plastic bottles, milk cartons, plastic covers that can be recycled. Plastic and tetra pak recycling should be a part of your office eco-friendly culture.
Educate your staff
Not everyone is aware and conscious of the environmental impact of their actions. Many people still do not recycle paper and plastic items. There’s an overall absence of social awareness about environmental conservation. Hence it’s essential to educate your staff about different eco-friendly practices that they can follow at the workplace and their homes.
You can encourage them to walk or use a bicycle for commuting to work and reduce the use of single-use plastics. Workshops and seminars are an excellent way to create environmental awareness in your team and encourage them to make simple lifestyle changes to reduce their carbon footprint.
Be conscious of your paper use
Papers are a widely used item in the corporate world. A massive amount of paper is used by companies every day for printing, packaging and other purposes.
Sadly, not every company emphasizes the optimized use of paper. Every workplace should take the necessary steps to reduce paper use and find the best alternatives for paper.
You can also replace the standard paper with recycled paper for printing and packaging use. Encourage your staff members to use both sides of the paper to reduce the paper usage to almost 50%.
If that is something you can’t do, you can use the blank side of the printed paper for writing. Using eSignatures can also reduce the necessity of printing the documents for the sake of signatures.
Such simple yet effective techniques can help reduce your workplace’s carbon footprint and make it greener. You can also choose different renewable energy sources like solar to reduce energy usage.