It’s pretty much common knowledge that there are many ways to “go green” at home. However, it is possible to make these changes at work as well. If you want to expand the benefits that you are bringing to the environment through what you do at home by making changes at work too, then check out this article. It will give you some tips for being an environmental activist at work — and for sharing your expertise with your co-workers.
Talk to your employer and see if there are any ways you can increase the environmentalism that your company practices. Perhaps you can convince them to order only recycled paper, instead of standard office paper. Also, see if you can convince your company to order water that comes in the large plastic bottles that sit inside coolers, instead of providing the smaller plastic water bottles. Having employees bring their own bottles to use while draining the larger bottle will cut down on the number of bottles that are consumed. Even though plastic bottles are recyclable, the energy that goes into producing them can be conserved if everyone has their own permanent bottles.
Throughout your workday, there are many ways to use less paper. First of all, don’t print out every single email that you receive. You don’t need hard copies of them, especially with the sophistication of the most recent version of mail applications, which allow you to sort the messages in your inbox into as many different folders as you need to. This way, you can have the messages at your fingertips, anywhere that you can find an Internet connection.
Another way to save paper in the workplace is to work with documents on your monitor screen. If you have a document that you need to look at while you’re working on something else, pull it up on your monitor or on your tablet computer. You can refer to it while working on another document on your monitor. This way, you won’t have to print things out and use paper and ink.
There are many more materials that can be recycled besides paper. If you drink water out of plastic bottles, those are easy to recycle. If you’re drinking soda out of a plastic bottle or aluminum can, it just takes a few seconds of rinsing to prepare them for the recycling bin as well. If you have cardboard boxes that contain items that you have ordered, you can break them down and recycle them as well. Even the ink cartridges that you use in your printers are recyclable — the manufacturers often include the recycling envelopes in the packaging in which you buy them, or you can run the old cartridges by an office supply store and drop them off.
If you are energy efficient at work, you will be helping out the environment — and yourself as well. You’ll be boosting the use of green energy, and you’ll be spreading the word of environmentalism to those you work with.