10 Ways to Reduce Your Impact on the Environment at Work

With growing concern about human impact on the earth and environment, it's only prudent to investigate ways to reduce your contribution to environmental damage. Change begins at the individual level, and while we can begin taking small steps on our own, the greatest change will occur when this effort is made on a community level.

If you're concerned about contributing to environmental damage and want to make a difference, you should think about making your workplace more environmentally friendly. Having eco-friendly policies and encouraging employees to adopt eco-friendly practices would have a significant impact because when you take measures on an organizational level, you are requiring everyone in your organization to change their practices, and the impact will be cumulative - and stronger!

This blog post discusses some of the best ways to make your workplace more environmentally friendly. It's time to stop the guilt trip and start making a difference!

The Importance of Eco-Friendly Practices

Switching to an eco-friendly lifestyle is a significant - and not easy - step. While it doesn't require much from your end aside from conscious choices, sticking to the new practices requires a lot of persistence, and when we talk about adopting eco-friendly practices on an organizational level, it means having all of your employees on the same page as you.

You may be wondering why you go through all of this trouble when things are going so well.

The answer is that - no, things aren't going fine. Our planet is deteriorating, and the damage is worsening by the day. If you don't take action right now, the entire human race will suffer.

We believe that switching to eco-friendly practices is absolutely necessary for the following reasons:

Lowers the amount of waste generated

The first and biggest reason why you should consider making your workplace eco-friendly is that it helps you cut down on the amount of waste produced. With more waste produced, there's more waste for the authorities to dispose of. Considering global waste production, it seems nearly impossible for the authorities to dispose of it properly. This results in the wrong means of disposal, like dumping the waste into water. Workplaces can generate a lot of waste, especially paper and plastic waste. By switching to eco-friendly practices, you can significantly reduce the amount of waste your organization produces.

Saves Energy

Everything you use in your office is produced through an energy-consuming process. Production of some products consumes more energy than others. You save tons of energy by ensuring the use of products that are made through less energy-consuming processes in your office. For example, the disposable cutlery in your office is all made of plastic, and plastic is one of the most energy-consuming products. By stopping the use of plastic materials in your office, you preserve energy that would have been spent on making the products.

Saves Money

You read that right. Switching to eco-friendly practices can help you save money. One of the best eco-friendly practices includes recycling and reusing. When you recycle and reuse the things you can, you save money on all the new things you would have needed if you didn't reuse and recycle. Eco-friendly practices also cover using lesser energy or gas, which will help you save money on electricity and gas bills.

How Can You Make Your Workplace Eco-Friendly

Striving to make your workplace eco-friendly is definitely worth it. The question is – how to make your workplace eco-friendly? Well, let's see how you can do that!

1. Create a Paperless Environment

Going paperless is one of the best ways to make your workplace eco-friendly. Paper is made from trees, and the growing demand for paper has led to increased deforestation (which is one of the major causes of global warming) (which is one of the major causes of global warming). Encourage all your employees to avoid printing at all costs. You can encourage your employees to use cloud storage for storing and sharing documents and emails to give and take approvals, and you can switch to digital pay stubs. One way you can ensure your employees don't print unnecessarily is to reduce the number of printers available and have every employee log in with the number of papers they printed. Not only will this result in reduced paper usage and wastage, but it'll also reduce the amount of electricity used.

2. Tell Your Employees to Unplug All Devices Before They Leave Even if the computers, printers, and scanners are powered off, they still use some power (phantom power) (phantom power). Not only are these devices utilizing electricity which can add to your company's electricity bills, but it's actually a waste of electricity, to say the least. Make it a policy that requires all employees to unplug their devices before they leave at the end of the day.

3. Replace Disposable Plates and Glasses

Most offices use disposable plates and glasses so that there are not too many dirty dishes at the end of the day for the office staff to clean. But did you know that the disposable plates and glasses that you use are all made of plastic? Plastic is the most harmful material that has already overburdened landfills and continues to do so. One way to make your office eco-friendly is to replace disposal plates and glasses with sustainable products like bamboo or glass crockery and bamboo cutlery. Bamboo is one of the most eco-friendly materials that require minimum usage of chemicals and lasts the longest.

4. Don't Use Paper Towels

Every office has paper towels in their kitchens and washrooms. But like paper, paper towels aren't eco-friendly. Paper towel production causes deforestation, and therefore, the use of paper towels should be discouraged. What you can do is replace paper towels with micro-fiber clothes. These clothes are washable and reusable, so you won't be producing any waste.

5. Invest in Sustainable Furniture

Have you ever given thought to the type of furniture you use in your office? Some of your office furniture can be toxic to the environment as well. For example, the leather chairs that you use contain arsenic which is extremely toxic in its inorganic form. To make your office environment-friendly, you must opt for sustainable furniture like bamboo work desks such as Kana Pro Bamboo Standing Desk and aluminum and mesh chairs.

6. Don't Keep the Window Shades Down During Daylight Hours

If you've got plenty of windows in your office, you shouldn't keep the shades down during the day. The more windows, the more natural light will come into the office, and the lesser there will be a need to turn extra lights on. You can save a lot of energy by allowing natural light to infiltrate your office.

7. Recycle and Reuse

Place recycling bins at various places in your office to serve as reminders for the employees that they should recycle and reuse. There are a lot of waste items that can be recycled, like plastic bottles, papers, cardboard boxes, etc. There are also a lot of items that you can reuse, like empty cartons. Set up a strict recycling and reuse policy in your office to minimize the waste produced. Not only this, recycling and reuse can also help you cut costs and save energy on a wider scale.

8. Install Push Taps

Replace the regular water taps in the office washrooms with push taps. This can reduce water waste significantly. Push taps are taps that are activated with a push and stay activated for a very short duration, unlike regular taps that leave the water running until you don't turn the tap off yourself.

9. Install Motion-Activated Light Switches

Many times, the lights in a room in an office stay on even when nobody's using them. This is a pure waste of electricity. Installing motion-activated light switches can make your office eco-friendly. These switches will turn the lights on automatically as soon as someone walks into the office, and they'll turn off on their own when they don't detect motion (considering the office is empty) (considering the office is empty). This will ensure that the lights are only on when someone's using the space.

10. Educate Your Employees

You can't create an eco-friendly and sustainable office if your employees don't understand the purpose. It's important that you educate your employees about the importance of switching to eco-friendly practices, both at work and out of the office, and also tell them about the changes you expect them to adopt. When your employees are on the same page as you, the journey toward creating an eco-friendly workplace becomes a bit easier and less challenging.

Final Word

Creating an eco-friendly workplace not only helps you play your part in saving the world but also helps you build a good rapport in the market as an environmentally-conscious organization. An increasing number of people are opting for eco-friendly products, and your organization will attract the right people who'll help you make your workplace truly eco-friendly.