greenatworkSo maybe you’re at home. You compost, you recycle… you know what you’re doing.

Alright, wise guy, what about at ? Huh? Sure, it’s not your home — that doesn’t been you can’t bring the same attitude to with you, does it?

In this article, I’ll give you some examples of ways you can change your bad habits in the workspace!

– For many, coffee is an indispensable part of their workday. Did you realize that in one year we throw away 25 BILLION ?

SOLUTION? Use a ceramic mug. Over its life span, a mug can be used 3,000 times, resulting in significantly less solid and air than using the equivalent number of disposable cups. Another is to ask your favorite coffee shops to serve your java in your own travel mug. Most will gladly comply.

– More than 300 million plastic printer cartridges end up in landfills each year; that’s about 8 cartridges every second. There’s NO reason why a cartridge can’t be reused up to four times. You will cut and save up to 90% on the cost of a new cartridge.

SOLUTION? Use a reputable company that offers a written guarantee against printer damage.

– The typical U.S. worker uses 10,000 sheets of each year. Much of this comes from native pine forests and is chlorine-bleached, a process that produces dioxins.

SOLUTION?

  • Whenever possible, use both sides.
  • Set the printer of photocopier defaults so that you have to choose not to print double-sided.
  • Print out only what is necessary, and proofread documents carefully on your computer screen to avoid having to print multiple copies.

There are also free software downloads that automatically eliminate all that extra “stuff” you don’t want to print from anything online. My favourite is Nuke Anything. This is a FireFox add-on that allows users to simply highlight a section of a webpage, right click, and select “Remove this object.”

– Leaving on after all the workers have left, combined with all the left on standby, can double a company’s energy bill. U.S. commercial buildings alone generate 18 percent of the country’s CO2 emissions. Unnecessary also generate unnecessary heat, requiring the air conditioner to overtime, using even more electricity.

SOLUTION? Ask your building manager to turn off at night or to install movement activated sensors. Take the by placing reminders near light switches in the areas where you .

INDOOR AIR – The Environmental Protection Agency () ranks indoor air as one of the top five environmental health risks today. The air inside a sealed, energy-efficient building can be 25-100 times more polluted than outside. The estimates that the negative impact on workers’ health costs the U.S. economy between $17 and $43 billion each year.

SOLUTION? Plants are natural filters, absorbing airborne pollutants and radiation from while replenishing oxygen levels. Having plants in the workplace can reduce fatigue, coughs, sore throats, and other cold-related illnesses by up to 30%.

– and monitors use more electricity than all other office equipment combined. The average computer left on all day, every day uses nearly 1,000 kilowatts of electricity over the course of a year, producing more than a ton of carbon emissions. In contrast, a computer switched off at the end of the day uses less than 250 kilowatts – and significantly lowers energy bills.

SOLUTION? Turn off your computer on nights and weekends. If you’re away from your computer for shorter periods, put it in sleep mode or enable your PC’s power management features, which reduces energy use to about 5% of full operating power.

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