These days, most people understand the importance of reducing waste and lowering pollution. While many people put effort into being environmentally aware at home, sometimes those good habits are forgotten in the workplace. It doesn’t take a huge upheaval to introduce eco-friendly habits into an office, sometime a few easy changes are enough. Here are some simple ways you can make your workspace environmentally friendly:
Recycling
It has almost become second nature to recycle at home, with most houses having different bins for different materials. If you can do it at home, there is no reason why this practice should end once you reach work. Implementing a recycling system will ensure that plastic and paper waste will be recycled instead of ending up in a landfill.
Encourage Car Sharing
Traveling to work doesn’t have to be alone in your car. If you have a bunch of workers traveling to work each day inside individual cars, encourage them to team up and share a car if they live in a similar area. Car sharing will reduce car pollution, and even bring more positivity into the workplace, as employees won’t have traveled alone!
Implement Technologies
A great way of reducing paper waste is to store records and data on technology instead. It also reduces the amount of space needed for old archives in an office space, freeing up room for more employees or other work areas. Think about when you are hiring new employees – there is so much paperwork to get through. If you use an online tool to help with Employee Onboarding, you don’t only make things simpler and more streamlined, you also help the environment!
Be Mindful of Electricity
When you’re around the workspace, make sure you switch lights off when you leave an area. It’s easy to get into a habit of leaving all the lights on at work, but making sure an empty room isn’t wasting light will help reduce energy emissions. Another big culprit in the workspace is computers being left on stand-by, which can hugely drain electricity. Make sure all computers are fully switched off before the building is locked up.
Purchase Green Office Supplies
An easy way of making a workplace eco-friendly is to buy green office supplies. Next time you’re ready for a purchase order, look around for sustainable products. Most office supplies now have a green variant, from recycled paper to wooden pencils, so you can care for the environment without implementing too much change.
Create Monthly Challenges
Creating an environmentally friendly workspace becomes fun if it is turned into monthly challenges for employees. Encourage green thinking by challenging workers to reduce waste and switch off more often. You could give out prizes if a certain achievement is met, for example, reducing the landfill waste by three bin bags a month could equal a catered lunch.
Cultivating a green workspace doesn’t have to change your work-life dramatically – these simple steps are enough to get you started in the right direction of being more environmentally aware at work.
