In this day and age, people are becoming more concerned about the environment and how our behaviours affect the planet. This has placed greater importance on companies becoming greener and more environmentally friendly, with the media shedding light on businesses that are found to be negatively impacting environment. With more pressure on industries to become more eco-friendly, many workplaces have put together plans to become greener to have a more positive impact on the world. In this article we will give you our top 5 tips to create a more environmentally friendly office, so your business can minimise its’ impacts on the environment, so you can offset your impact on the planet. So, follow our tips today to become a more environmentally responsible company.
Create a sustainability plan
Creating a sustainability plan for your office will be great for monitoring how environmentally friendly your office is. When we say create a sustainability plan, it does not need to be something ground-breaking, as when it comes to being more eco-friendly it’s the small changes that make a big difference. To put your plan together you could think of 10 green goals/challenges that you will be doing over the next month and look to build on these monthly. This could be anything that will have a positive impact on the environment to help make your office more sustainable. So, you could aim to recycle more waste products by adding recycling bins to your workplace or if you want to make a bigger impact you could plan to use public transport for your daily commute instead of driving. Even changing small habits like using the printer less or stopping the use of plastic utensils can make a difference to how your company impacts the planet, so by creating a plan you can make a change instead of making excuses. Put an office sustainability plan in place today to get working towards becoming greener at your workplace and see how you could make your business more environmentally friendly.
Recycle used office products when possible
When pens or staplers are no longer needed you may just chuck them away without thinking about recycling or how they could be reused. Well, it is time to change this behaviour and be more green with your thinking. There are many companies out there now that will welcome in old office supplies such as pens, highlighters and rubbers to distribute them to schools through charities. This will allow your products to be reused by people who are in need of them, while items that cannot be used can be incinerated to produce green energy or could be manufactured into new products. By doing this your office will become more environmentally friendly, while also giving you the satisfaction of providing supplies for others to use. In turn, this will have a great effect on making your business more eco-friendly and will also improve the reputation of your company. If you haven’t put them in your workplace already, we also highly recommend putting recycling bins your office to promote green behaviour. You could even put incentives in place to encourage your employees to recycle more waste products. Try recycling your old and used office supplies now to reduce the amount of waste your business is producing.
Turn off all Electrics in the evening
Leaving electronics on such as computers and printers or lighting and heating can not only be more costly to your monthly bills but will also increase the impact on the environment from your business. Although you may think this is a very simple idea, many office facilities are abandoned with electronics still on or plugged in. Unplugging electronics can make even more of a difference as power is still consumed if computers and other electronic devices are still plugged in. You may feel like this is unnecessary but if you are serious about making your office more environmentally friendly this could be a big step in becoming a greener company. Another recommendation regarding electronics is switching your light bulbs to energy-saving bulbs if you have not already. As well as doing this when replacing bulbs, you should also consider recycling your light bulbs so you can hit two sustainable targets in one. Reduce your impact on the environment at your office by following these simple steps in switching off all electronics, lighting and heating at the end of office hours, to save the environment and your electricity bill!
Go Plastic Free
We know it’s impossible to go completely plastic-free with some products, but where you can we highly recommend going plastic-free. Many companies now package their products using plastic free materials by using cardboard and other recyclable and reusable resources. By cutting back on disposable plastics you can minimise your impact on the environment and become more eco-friendly. As the media continue to shine the light on the volume and scale of the damage caused by the use of plastics on the environment, more pressure is being put on companies in the UK to reduce their use of plastic. As packaging is one of the most common applications of plastics (accounting to 26% of plastic use worldwide), it is vital that businesses now steer away from the use of plastic packaging. Sustainable packaging is predicted to continue to grow even further in future years, so it is crucial that you keep up with the times and switch to more eco-friendly packaging materials. So, when you are next purchasing supplies for your office make sure you order your products with plastic free packaging, to make your workplace more environmentally friendly.
Go Paperless
The final tip should be easy enough for you with the digital age well and truly alive. Now we have access to many online services such as Cloud storage services and Google drive, it is now more simple than ever to share documents with other people online. This has therefore wiped out the need for paper in the workplace and has vastly reduced the use of printers in offices. As the use of paper is high up on the wastage list in UK offices, reducing your paper use will have a great impact on how environmentally friendly your office is. Many people overuse printing services, and this leads to creating more office waste which is unneeded and excessive. However, you may still need to use the printer in certain situations for client presentations or handouts, so if you can limit the use of the printer in your office you can make it more sustainable. For those that still need to print we recommend investing in recycled paper and refilling ink and toner cartridges as well as recycling ones that are not in use. This will in hand lead to creating a greener office that is much more environmentally friendly. So, try and go paperless today or make your printing more eco-friendly for a more sustainable workplace.
Now we have given you our top 5 tips for a more environmentally friendly office it is time for you to make use of these recommendations and get on the path to making your workplace greener. Browse our eco-friendly products now or find out how we do our bit for the environment here at Galleon Supplies. If you have any questions regarding our environmental policy, feel free to contact us today to speak to one of our team for further information.
