Make Your Office Greener

Interested in reducing waste, saving energy and generally making your office more eco-friendly? This is where we post all our tips and articles about making your office green.

Five easy eco-tips for the office

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Here are five easy eco tips to make your office greener:

Easy notepads:
If your office uses a lot of paper, before recycling build a stack of about 50 sheets, then cut into quarters leaving 4 smaller stacks of paper. Attach a bulldog clip to the top, and you have your own eco-friendly notepad, sketch pad or jotter. You won’t need to buy any more and you can re-use the clip afterwards. When finished, recycle the paper as normal!

Reuse padded envelopes:
If you receive a padded envelope through the post, instead of tearing them carefully open the top, being careful not to rip the paper too much.  The envelope can then be reused again. Simply put a label with the new address over the old one, stick a layer of tape over the opening at the top. Once secure you can post it again. This can be done several times!

Ditch the plastic cups:
By that we mean the disposable throw-away cups- the type where you drink a coffee then throw the cup away. This can produce an extortianate amount of waste as hundreds of cups can be thrown out every day.  The simple solution is bring your own cup! If you have a vending machine, most will allow you to put your own cup when the drink is dispensed so the plastic cup won’t appear. You’ll get a bigger hot drink,  and a nicer looking mug.

Switch Off: Energy usage of many companies and households is sky-high, yet so many computers are left on overnight unnessecarily. If they are not used overnight, give them – and the environment – a break by switching them off overnight when you go home. Turn off photocopiers, printers, monitors and lights, and make sure phones and chargers are unplugged to save more energy. Remember lower energy bills also mean more savings. It is said that a computer left on overnight produces the equivelant of enough carbon dioxide ( CO2 ) to fill a double decker bus.

Turn down the heat: Your heating costs will go up by 8% each time you increase the temperature by just one degree. A 2°C increase in office temperature creates enough CO2 in a year to fill a hot air balloon. Turn down the heating, put on some warmer clothes if you feel cool and you’ll see your bills – and environmental impact go down. Never ever have the heating on and windows open at the same time- it is one of the worst wastes of energy possible.

Can I recycle used printer cartridges?

Monday, September 15th, 2008

Yes you can! Be sure not to throw away your used printer cartridges as they can be recycled, so there is no need to send them to the landfill. And what’s more you can give money to charity just by giving away your used printer cartridges — and it won’t cost you a penny.

The humble printer cartridge: empty inside but still giving

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Make your PC more energy efficient or extend your laptop battery life with ‘undervolting’

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

In the previous article I talked about defining waste and came to the conclusion that energy conservation is not sensible unless you can clearly define what electricity usage is not being used but is still powered on (and therefore is waste) and what is actually enhancing the user experience. In many offices, PC’s are only used for basic tasks such as writing letters and other administration, but they are built and powered to do much more. Therefore a lot of the computer power is permanently being wasted, as it is never needed for such basic tasks. This article explains how you can cut back on that wasted energy without compromising on the user experience.

This is a guest article, written by our Dutch work placement student Maarten (AKA M.J.) from the Da Vinci College, Gorinchem. Please note: this article is quite technical. Please don’t try these procedures unless you know what you are doing and/or are willing to risk damaging your machine.

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How conserving electricity is bad for the environment (sometimes)

Monday, April 28th, 2008

Are we going the right way?

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Which is more eco-friendly; electric hand dryers or hand towels?

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

In this article we are going to try to determine which is more eco-friendly out of paper hand towels and electric hand dryers. There are two main factors involved in this comparison. One, carbon emissions produced as a result of delivery lorry driving and electricity usage. And secondly, waste disposal of the various materials.

Hand dryers: you gotta love 'em

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