Green Office Angel

Light and Bright

Keeping windows, walls and all surfaces clean and bright

helps daylight flood the office, reducing your need for artificial lighting and keeping those bills down!

Review your use of chemicals in the office

such as air fresheners and cleaning materials. You can improve air quality by using environmentally friendly alternatives.

Think about the current seating plan

Are you optimising all natural daylight with people seated to take advantage the window space? This may cut the use of additional desk lamps and it's much nicer anyway!

Fitting adjustable vertical blinds

which limit glare while not impacting on natural daylight are a better choice than horizontal blinds. Painting the walls and ceilings in light colours (and keeping them clean) also helps.

Reducing energy use and helping save money!

Replace any remaining tungsten filament lightbulbs

with compact fluorescent bulbs. A compact fluorescent bulb uses less than a quarter of the electricity of a tungsten filament bulb of equivalent brightness and will last about ten times as long

Turn off all monitors and printers

when leaving the office in the evening, in addition to shutting down the computers

Don't leave phone or laptop chargers plugged in

when they aren't charging as this still uses a substantial amount of electricity

Switch off lights

when there is no-one using the room

Switch your electricity account

to a supplier that supports renewable energy through a 'green tariff'

Does it have to be that hot?!

Some offices leave the heating on for 24 hours a day. Maybe set the timer to go 'off' an hour or so before the office is shut. It will propably be naturally warmer anyway with everyone in and you could make a big saving here. And turn the heating down before just opening a window!

Monitor the air con

in the same way...

Resourcefulness

Ensure that people are print aware when photocopying

or downloading e-mails and reports and of course, use recycled paper and use double sided documents

Think too about the amount of plastic wallets, folders and files

etc that are being used around the office. Look for suppliers like Sseco who produce 100% biodegradable products

Many of us are great at recycling plastic bottles

and cans at home and then completely forget the impact of lunch and snacks in the office! Make sure there is a tin and plastic recycling point in the office

Travel

Think about travel too.

Are there some of you that come in by car from the same area? Dress Down Friday did a lot for making our office attire more casual, perhaps introduce Travel Twin Tuesday and get people to share travel once a week!

Rethink your travel.

Set up a lift sharing scheme for car-dependent commuters. For a large organisation, this might require an intranet, but in a smaller office word of mouth should work even better.