Green Blog
15 February 2011
Greening your office - does it matter?
Just because Friends of the Earth is an environmental organisation doesn't mean we always get it right. But we're getting there.
I'm part of the Green Challenge Team and we've written a How to Green your Office Guide to share our tips.
Many people really have taken to recycling in the past 10 years and many are frustrated that we can't do the same at work.
Lots of businesses - big or small - waste huge amounts of energy and generate huge amounts of paper and plastic that goes straight to landfill. And of course this wastes money too.
Saving money was one of the reasons we switched to buying eco-friendly cleaning products in 25-litre containers. We also saved on bills by getting most staff to switch off monitors when not at their desk and to make sure lights and printers are off when leaving the office at night.
We worked with our IT team and they set all our printers to double-sided printing. Our facilities team supported the idea of setting up recycling bins on each floor and of getting our food waste collected.
Things have really changed here over time. For example, 85% of our waste is recycled, 9% composted and only 6% sent to landfill. We hope that one day soon we will send 0% waste to landfill.
It feels good to do our bit. I'm sure many more of us would with Government leadership on recycling to help all business to go green.
Karen Liebenguth, Organisational Development Team
© Marc Swarbrick
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