Forget Green at Home: Green at Work’s Where Its At
You can’t move these days without hearing about how you can cut your CO2 emissions in your home, with ad campaigns, government policies and constant news coverage. An army of newly-enlisted eco-warriors are going about switching to energy saving bulbs, insulating their lofts and stopping putting their TVs on standby.The thing is, the damage we cause to the environment individually is only a small piece of a much bigger pie.The truth is that the largest part of the global enviornmental burden comes from businesses and organisations.It’s like an economy of scale – if you change a small thing within a big company you can see tremendous results.
Fair enough, I hear you say. But it’s not my problem to fix. Its down to the management to take care of the company’s environmental policy. But that’s just not true. Whether you work for the private, public or charity sector you can have a significant impact on your organisation’s carbon footprint.What’s more, green initiatives at work can be hugely more effective than the things you might do in the home.
Here are some pointers, small and large, on achieving a greener workplace:
- Recycle office waste. The sheer volume of plastic, paper and card chucked out by the average office is massive in comparison to your household output. Have a go at introducing recycling collection units on each floor. You can get a lot of help to put this in place, and there are local government recycling schemes everywhere who often provide free collection bins for offices.
- Cut down on driving. Emissions from car exhausts are so harmful, and they can be cut by starting a fairly simple car pooling system. Even better, ditch the motor and get a bike, or walk to the office.
- Change to energy saving bulbs. At home, switching to low energy bulbs will only save you a small amount of energy. But multiply that by all the bulbs lighting up your office and you can see how powerful a change this could make.
- Green Machines. The energy usage of IT systems is huge for the majority of companies and organisations. Switching off your computer monitor is one simple but effective measure you can start with. But don’t just stop there – by getting your IT department to review the company’s “green baseline” you can multiply the impact. Get them to perform some proper asset tracking on all office IT equipment, using professional asset management software, a business can dramatically reduce its carbon footprint and help meet increasingly stringent government environmental requirements.
- Campaigning. Take matters into your own hands. The real revolution begins when you gather sympathetic colleagues to run Green campaigns at work. By pressuring the management to take their green obligations seriously we little people can really make a big difference. Often, like the IBM ad above shows, the green way is also the most economical way. For example, companies involved in transporting goods and supplies often generate millions of tons of CO2. Pushing them to properly review their transport and logistics management and make the smallest of improvements can save them big money and dramatically reduce their carbon footprint in the process.
These are just some ideas. What I really wanted to achieve with this piece is to get people thinking about these issues and how it applies to you. If you have any other ideas, I’d be happy to hear them!