Saving on cost and energy is easy to do at home.  I have a colleague whose eight year-old is on light patrol.  Every time a light is left on and she turns it off she collects one sticker (two if she catches Dad!).  The eleven year old is in charge of making sure that no one uses too much water or leaves the taps running too long.  At the end of the week who ever has the most stickers gets to chose the Saturday afternoon activity. 

 

While this concept works for the family some might deem it inappropriate for the office.

 

Now the question is how can I make easy ‘green' decisions, much like the ones at home, at work?  The epiphany came to me on a Tuesday morning while walking to the office.  It was just that; I was walking to the office!  My better half and I had made the decision to have only one car as a scheme to save money (parking, gas, insurance not to mention the sanity that comes with 25 minutes all to myself), but what a great gesture to the environment as well!

 

Now I am not naïve enough to think that everyone is as lucky as me to get to walk to work so let us make the environmental gesture even easier.  What if one day a week you made the decision to take public transit or to car pool?  It could be deemed Transit Tuesdays.  What if the concept was taken one step further by getting the entire office to participate?  A company could offer to reimburse the fair. Maybe at the end of the month or quarter, the person who has taken the bus or car-pooled the most would win a coffee card.  There is also another option I've noticed in the city.  The concept of shared automobiles.  Zipcars.com and Cooperativeautonetwork.com are two companies that essentially do a car-share (think timeshare but not as exotic).

 

So that puts a check mark in the "before you get to the office category".  What else?  In the spirit of coming across great ideas with out trying, I decided to go through the rest of my regular Tuesday observing what I already did for the environment in addition to any small and easy things I could incorporate.

 

Before getting to my office I put my lunch in the fridge...wait a minute!  I used Tupperware for my lunch; I am better at this than I thought.  Once at my desk I checked my messages while placing my wallet, keys and mobile into my messy drawer.  Frustrated with the state, I decided that this was the day to clean out my desk.  In the small drawer I found three unused sticky pads and a box of pens.  After that I looked around my whole office looking for how else I could de-clutter.  I ended up discovering a stapler, file folders and other miscellaneous items that I definitely did not need.  What if everyone cleaned out his or her desks and we returned everything that was extra or not used to the supply room.  This would definitely cut down on cost and waste not to mention fresh looking office. 

 

Feeling very proud of myself (at least three stickers worth), I decided to open the subject to my colleagues who had some other great ideas.  One suggested a recycling program.  She even offered to get everyone a blue box from a local department store for his or her desk.  Just having it under our desks promoted paper to be recycled instead of tossed in the regular garbage.  Easy. 

 

Save a tree and make double sided copies when you can.  Many people don't even know that the duplex function exists on many printers and photocopiers these days.  The technologies have improved immensely.  Not to mention that ‘draft' printing saves toner - I mean, who cares if you have high quality printing for your e-mails!  So easy!

 

Turn off the lights on a sunny day.  Lighting also creates heat; it takes triple the energy to cool a space one degree than to heat the same space one degree.

 

On that note why not open the windows or keep the air conditioner set a degree or two lower than usual? 

 

Bottom line is that the team building, tree-planting trip may not be necessary to feel good about your office contributing to the health of the environment.  Taking small steps and doing things just a little bit differently is really good enough, and when more times than not the bi product is saving money for your office it really is a win-win situation.

 <