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How our employees help
Our staff planted more than 600 trees on Planet Ark National Tree Day.
Many of us spend a good third of our day at work. So it makes sense to look at simple changes you can make to save energy and resources in the office. You may influence your workmates; better still, your efforts may persuade your employer to adopt environmentally friendly, cost-saving, policies at all levels of the business.
10 top tips
- Avoid printing documents such as meeting agendas and emails
- If you must print, set printers to ‘double sided’ and print multiple pages on each side
- Recycle printer, photocopier and fax machine waste
- Build a team library for printed presentations and reports which everyone can access
- Recycle your mobile phone, and try to hang onto them for longer to reduce landfill
- Take your own mugs to the coffee shop
- Switch off lights in meeting rooms, break areas and conference spaces, particularly at the end of the day
- Turn off coffee machines and appliances after use
- Disconnect lighting in vending machines. Better still, get rid of them altogether, they emit large amounts of CO2
- Turn off your monitor and PC and any local printers that are connected to a PC or laptop when you leave the office
Did you know?
- Air-conditioning and artificial lighting left on long after most workers have gone home accounts for 84%* of the energy used in office buildings
- Screensavers don't save energy, they just protect your screen. If you like your screensaver, set it to come on for a few minutes, but set your computer to then switch to sleep mode
- A laptop uses about 10% of the power used by a desktop computer
* Australian Greenhouse Office, 1999
Further Links
The Green Office Guide helps you buy and use environmentally friendly office equipment.