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How to Go Green in the Office

Increasingly, people are making their lives more eco-friendly because it helps reduce green house emissions and makes for a better environment we can all enjoy. Whether it’s recycling at home or using a canvas tote bag for groceries, people are incorporating green ways to their daily lives. Since you spend most of your day there, you can make your workplace more eco-friendly as well. You can help make it green and save money by cutting costs.

One of the best things you can do to go green in your workplace is to reduce the amount of paper you use. Offices use a lot of paper for a number of things. As Tree Hugger suggests, you can make an effort to cut the amount of paper you print by trying to digitize your documents. Instead of making copies for the entire office during your presentation, scan it and email it to them. The more you do your work on your computer, the less paper you use. You can also apply this further by saving copies of your files to an external hard drive instead of printing them out and saving them in a folder to add to your filing cabinet. Companies are increasingly digitizing their files, so if you haven’t been doing this already, it’s a good time to start to decrease the amount of trees you use and go green in your workplace

Eco-friendly office supplies are another way to go green in the workplace. You can find many of these products at your local office supply aisle at any store now. Ask your company to consider using these eco-friendly toners, paper and lights to help become more eco-friendly. Eco-friendly bulbs last longer and will reduce your company’s energy bill as well. Turn off the lights when you aren’t in the room. And try to use natural lighting instead of office lighting when you can. Natural lighting is a lot nicer on the eyes than those fluorescent lights anyways.

Switch your workplace kitchen supplies from plastic and paper to non-disposable. Think about the amount of times you grab that plastic cup for water during the work week. You probably use a lot of them and they pile up in the trash by the end of the day. Then think about the amount of times you go to the kitchen to grab a plastic utensil. It’s probably very frequent. Your office probably spends money each month replenishing this stock of plastic kitchen supplies. By switching over to non-disposable supplies, you can use one cup for all your beverage needs and go green! Instead of throwing it away all you have to do is wash it.

You can also set up a recycle station in your office. If you can’t get your office to stop using plastic and paper products, you can at least recycle them so they don’t go to waste. Set up a recycling station for recycling papers, plastics and cardboard. This will also encourage everyone in the workplace to become more involved in eco-friendly efforts.

What are some things you do to go green in your workplace or have an eco-friendly office? Share with us in the comments section below!

IMAGE: Courtesy of Flickr by andyarthur

Hanna Guerrero

Hannah is an intern writer here at Spark Hire. She is from the northern suburbs in Chicago and is currently studying journalism at DePaul University. She has always had a passion for writing which is why Journalism has proven to be the perfect career for her. She has written for the DePaulia Online on various topics such as fashion, music, movies and television. She loves living in Chicago because it offers exciting events to write stories on. In her free time she enjoys going to music concerts, watching movies with friends, cooking vegetarian food and walking her adorable Cocker Spaniel Coco.

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