Sustainability in the Workplace | How to Make Your Office More Eco-Friendly

You're passionate about Sustainability and have been making some serious changes around your home to cut down on your energy, water and plastic consumption. How about your workplace? Is there a way you can make your office more environmentally friendly? How about championing a vegan lifestyle at work too?

Today more than ever, businesses are supporting environmentally friendly office practices and encouraging their employees to practice sustainability in their workplaces. In fact, more and more companies are reporting on their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) credentials and becoming increasingly sensitive to the impact of their operations on the environment and the communities they work with.

As a sustainability consultant with over 10 years of work experience, I know how difficult it can be to get an idea rolling, especially one which might involve changing age old habits. But don't worry I've got a few tricks up my sleeves. In this blog post, I will show you some simple ways you can make your workplace more sustainable and reduce not just your carbon footprint at work but also save time and money for yourself and your boss!

Consume Fewer Resources

Commercial buildngs play a significant role in the emission of greenhouse gases. In addition to the high demand for energy and water, our workplaces are also responsible for the increasing consumption of paper and plastic products, a large portion of which utlimately end up in the landfill.

There are a number of steps you can take to reduce the amount of waste you produce at work. It may not seem like much, but your actions can inspire your colleagues who can then inspire other colleagues until a snowball effect takes place and you have the entire office involved! Here's how:

• Use Less Paper: Don't print unless you need to, print double sided and set yourself a quota for the month. You could also remove the waste basket from under your desk. In my personal experience, this has been an incredible incentive for me to stretch my legs and walk around the office.

• Say No to Plastic: Refuse single-use plastics for your lunch and carry your own reusable bottle and utensils. One way to avoid clingfilm is to use the highly versatile beeswax wraps.

• Use Natural Light: See if you can sit near the window or open the blinds, you'll be surprised by how little light you might actually need, plus natural light can also increase your productivity levels.

Bring your own lunchbox to work and avoid using single-use plastics and food wrapped in plastic packaging

• Switch Off: Ensure you turn off the lights when you leave a meeting room or the kitchen and that your computer is shut down at the end of your work day. You can put up a simple post-it note next to your monitor and switches to remind you.

• Turn down the heating / cooling: This is often a contentious issue at work so speak to your colleagues and office manager first. Put an extra layer of clothing during winter months or take a layer off during summer. Optimal office temperature is considered to be 22 Celsius, where productivity is considered to be the highest.

• Go Vegan: Eating a plant-based diet, at least a couple of days a week, will further help to reduce your carbon footprint (among many other ethical and health-related reasons). Consider ordering vegan food for meetings or work lunches and have a list handy of all the vegan eateries near your office for takeaway.

• Green your Office Wardrobe: Consider either buying secondhand office attire or buying high quality clothes that you don't need to replace that often. At House of Ethics, you can choose vegan office and laptop bags, made from cork leather which is a sustainable and natural material used as an alternate for leather bags and accessories. They also make a great vegan gift for your workmates.

Vegan bags made with cork leather can be the hottest fashion accessory in your office!

Travel Less

Post COVID times, this is of course a no-brainer, but let's just list them here nonetheless.

• Flexible Work: Speak to your supervisor or HR to see if you can work from home or work flexible hours (come into work early or leave late to avoid rush hour traffic).

• Sustainable Transport: Find out if there is a car sharing program at work (or if not, you can start one by writing a post on your local Facebook group to see if someone would be interested). Or consider taking the public transport and save yourself money, time and hassle. Have you also thought cycling to work (a lot of offices now have shower and locker facilities dedicated for cyclists)?

• Virtual Meetings: Use video conferencing apps (like Skype or Zoom) to speak with your clients and use a task management software (such as Trello or Asana) to manage projects and deadlines within your team.

These simple measures will help you to reduce your commute time or alternatively, help you choose the most sustainable modes of transport for you as well as save you money and stress!

Working from home not only helps you to reduce your travel footprint but allows for hotdesking at work which means spending less resources for additional office space.

Do Some Good

Sometimes it's important that we are not perceived as an environmental watchdog but as a source of positive influence around the workplace. You can create a change by:

• Indoor Plants: Bring a couple of pots for your desk and you will help to improve the indoor quality of your office space.

• Search the Web: Use Ecosia as your search engine (it's free to use) and the company will plant a tree on your behalf. The best thing is that their servers run on 100% renewable energy.

• Volunteer: As part of their commitment to a CSR agenda, companies often offer a certain number of volunteer days to their employees. Find out if your company would be willing to let you volunteer at your favourite charity. If not, take some days off from your annual leave and donate your time to a worthy cause.

• Share the Message: You can write for your company's newsletter and share information with your colleagues about sustainability practices at the workplace.

Do you feel like your workplace is ready for a change? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts. You can also subscribe to our newsletter for more inspirational content.