2020 has left us with a much required need for betterment and care of ourselves, and the people around us. Once we let it be untouched for the tiniest while, nature flourished around us as we stayed home. Imagine how wonderful it would be if we show the earth a lot more of kindness and try to interfere as less as possible with the natural proceedings of mother nature.
In 2021, we’re all getting back on track, coming back to work, but with a new yearning for preservation. And with that, let us consider extending that into our work environment too- let us make our workplaces sustainable.
It just takes a few mindful practices, and a handful of well-considered decisions to get on the boat. Sustainability is a great way of living and would be even beneficial if it is involved in all aspects of our lives.
Here we are with 21 ways to make your workplace more sustainable in 2021!
1. Go paperless
As much as possible, try to limit the paper usage in your office. This includes less printing out of emails, receipts and invoices.
2. Maximise paper usage
A huge number of trees are cut down everyday to make papers that most of us usually end up wasting.
So instead of just tossing away sheets of paper that haven’t been used much, try to maximise their utility. Print on both sides of the paper, and maybe write notes or to do lists on the back side of old paper with only one side printed.
3. Recycle your paper waste
Waste segregation is very important and recycling, even more so. Either send useless waste papers and documents for recycling directly or through organisations. You can also first shred documents and then send them away for recycling.
4. Use recycled
Switching to products made of recycled paper is a prudent choice to make- there are huge ranges of recycled paper products, right from printing papers to toilet paper rolls too!
5. Eco-friendly stationery
For the next order of your office supplies, consider bulk ordering eco-friendly stationery products such as plantable pens and recycled paper pencils. You can also go for diaries made out of recycled paper and handmade sheets for your employees and clients!
6. Print prudently
Instead of throwing away cartridges of printing ink and toner, get them refilled. You can also go for brands that accept used and empty ink cartridges that can be reused by refilling them and using them again.
7. Green packaging
Eliminate plastic from your packaging materials, and reuse newspapers or even recycled packaging papers for cushioning. Using recycled cardboard boxes wherever necessary is a good idea too.
8. Switch off appliances not in use
This is one of the very basic steps to environmentally friendly living- switch off any lights, fans and any other appliances that aren’t in use.
This helps to reduce the electricity bills and also is beneficial to the environment.
9. Use energy efficient lighting.
Now that the offices will be opening again, there’ll be maintenances and repairing required. Switch to LED and other forms of energy efficient lights to save up on the bills and also cause lesser harm to the environment.
10. Install light sensors
Just add automatic light sensors to your set up- they’d sense the absence of motion and turn off the lights in the area.
11. Solar power
If you’re in the mood to extend your budget a bit, power your whole office by installing solar panels. The merits of this mode of green energy are innumerable!
12. Get rid of disposable water bottles
Single use plastics cause a lot of pollution and have painful adverse effects on the animal life around us. Instead distribute reusable and durable metal bottles among your employees and co-workers.
Makes for a great token and going for refills helps form healthy communication between colleagues too.
13. Low flow aerators
Install water aerators to your office taps. They reduce the amount of water wasted and consequently decrease water bills too.
14. Environment friendly cleaning products
Be it handwash liquids or floor cleaning solutions, go green to clean. Choose the natural and green variants for your cleaning product needs and help rid the environment of harmful chemicals.
This is also better because natural cleaning agents aren’t irritable to humans as their chemical counterparts.
15. Work From Home
If 2020 has taught us anything work-wise, it is that most of the work can be done at home. Now we realise that it isn’t exactly ideal with all the workspaces opening up, but in a way it is good too.
The lesser the number of people arriving in a place for a day, the lesser the resources are used. You can come up with cyclic rosters and maybe even make your work week shorter.
This will also bode well with social distancing and prevent overcrowding at your workplace.
16. Harness the power of the internet
Cloud is one of the most useful ways to store information and interact with your colleagues about work-related matters.This decreases the need for papers and facilitates better updated inputs.
17. Advertise online
Sending out flyers or newspaper advertisements requires paper to be used, and more often than not, wasted.
This is the era of social media- there’s a reason we are all flooded with the most accurate advertisements tailored to just our liking on Facebook and Instagram.
Artificial Intelligence services know exactly what people like, and businesses can use this to their advantage by advertising and holding a strong presence on social media instead.
18. Green Reminders
As a footer to all your work emails, you could include a green note suggesting the receiver to not print out unnecessary emails and documents, and to conserve paper.
19. Community transport
If all the people in your office bring with themselves their personal vehicles, it would cause a huge amount of pollution every day. To mitigate this problem, encourage your employees to utilise public transport services.
Now people must be worried about it being dirty, so what you can do is get a few electric or hybrid vans as office transport vehicles.
20. Carpool
If office vans aren’t feasible for your office in the near future, you can also urge your employees to carpool together- the aim is to reduce the number of vehicles on the road and thereby pollution.
21. Eco-friendly gift hampers
For your clients and employees, you can choose handmade products as gift baskets to facilitate better relationships.
Check out our collection of handmade gifts here.
It is indeed not easy to start practising all of these suddenly, but you can slowly inculcate some of these habits for a greener workplace.
Ensuring an eco-friendly workplace is definitely a step forward in the journey to sustainable living. Let us all come together to do our part!
