Tips for a Greener Workplace
Reach for the ENERGY STAR(R). Upgrading old products with new, more efficient systems will save energy. For example, a large bank customer reduced annual energy consumption by 34 percent, or 1.9 million kilowatt hours, using Xerox ENERGY STAR-qualified copiers and multifunction products instead of equivalent non-ENERGY STAR products. At $0.10 per kWh, that translates to savings of nearly $200,000 a year in electricity costs. Nearly all Xerox systems are designed to meet or exceed these energy standards - and the savings add up. In 2001, Xerox calculates that its ENERGY STAR-qualified products in customer locations around the world enabled electricity savings of nearly 1 million megawatt hours.
Replace stand-alone office products with multifunction systems. Evaluate your work requirements; an office copier, two printers and a fax machine can consume 1070 kWh of energy each year. But if one multifunction system can handle your document needs, it uses only 800 kWh annually. Xerox studies have shown that the annual energy consumption of a Xerox Document Centre multifunction system is typically 20 percent to 30 percent less than the combined annual energy consumption of the individual ENERGY STAR copier, printer and fax products it replaces. And if the multifunction system replaces products that are not ENERGY STAR qualified, energy savings can double.
Return print/copy cartridges and supplies for recycling. Never throw a spent toner cartridge away; these components have multiple lives. Xerox provides customers with prepaid postage to return cartridges for reuse and recycling. In 2001, more than 7 million cartridges and toner containers were returned by customers, preventing 16 million pounds of material from possibly entering landfills. Remanufactured cartridges are built and tested to the same performance specifications as new-build products. Or, consider using solid ink printers, which eliminate cartridges altogether and generate about 95 percent less waste during use than a typical color laser printer.
Seek office equipment with remanufactured or recycled parts. Despite a decade of proof, there are still buyers who mistakenly believe that products with recycled-part content are not as good as those built with all-new parts. Remanufacturing printers and copiers is a practice Xerox pioneered, and involves rebuilding and upgrading returned products and parts to as-new appearance and performance. This practice kept 149 million pounds of waste from going to landfill in 2001, and energy savings from parts reuse totaled 500,000 megawatt hours - enough energy to light more than 380,000 U.S. homes for one year. Since 1991, Xerox has reused/recycled the equivalent of more than 2 million machines.
Use scan-to-file and scan-to-e-mail capabilities. Hardcopy documents can be easily shared electronically using scanning features and software built into office systems, such as the Document Centre family. By decreasing the need to fax or mail hardcopy documents, these features help eliminate paper inventory, save phone and postage charges, and minimize the environmental impact of delivering documents by air or ground transportation.
From Xerox Corporation.
Be Bright about Light for a Greener Workplace
Artificial lighting accounts for 44 percent of the electricity use in office buildings.
Make it a habit to turn off the lights when you're leaving any room for 15 minutes or more and utilize natural light when you can.
Make it a policy to buy Energy Star-rated light bulbs and fixtures, which use at least two-thirds less energy than regular lighting, and install timers or motion sensors that automatically shut off lights when they're not needed.
Greener Conferences and Meetings 
Step 1: Gain Management or Sponsor Support
Sell your approach to management by emphasizing the range of environmental benefits, enhanced public image, and potential cost savings that result from incorporating environmental considerations into the planning process. In addition, your environmental leadership may help you obtain new or additional sponsorship and funding.
Step 2: Set Your Environmental Priorities
First, identify environmental issues that are especially significant to your organization, community, or region. Next, select environmental priorities reflecting those particular issues. Finally, determine the amount of effort your management will dedicate to meeting the priorities.
Clearly defined environmental priorities will help you identify the specific actions you can take to meet these objectives. The planning checklist at the end of this guide can help you set and meet these priorities.
Preventing or Reducing Waste
The best way to deal with waste is not to create it in the first place. Determine what materials are needed at your event and consider ways to reduce the amount used. For example, conference planners may reduce the amount of paper they distribute by purging duplicate addresses from mailing lists and requiring that all printed materials be double-sided.
Work With Your Recycling Vendor to Consider:
What items can be recycled in the event community? Where will you collect and store recyclables? Who will be responsible for signs and collection?
Contracting for Services:
If your event does not take place in a facility with recycling and food service contracts already in place, remember to share your environmental priorities with the potential contractors:
Incorporate priorities in the contract. Let reluctant contractors know that you can shop around for other contractors that will meet your environmental priorities. Consider incorporating incentives into contracts, such as sharing profits from the sale of recyclables.
Recycling and Managing Waste
Arrange for collection of as many recyclables as possible. Work with event site managers and recycling vendors when planning your meeting or event. Waste prevention measures and recycling collection will significantly reduce the amount of trash generated during your meeting or event.
Other Environmental Issues
Other environmental issues important to your community might include water conservation, air quality, or specific natural resource issues. For instance, meeting planners in California might place a high priority on water conservation during water shortages.
Step 3: Translate Your Priorities Into Actions
Selecting a Site
Look for a site that best addresses your environmental priorities. To meet waste reduction and energy conservation priorities, for example, look for a naturally lit site offering comprehensive recycling collection and mass transit services.
Arranging for Food Service
Select food service providers that use reusable serviceware, or sell products that come in recyclable, little, or no packaging. A careful head count of attendees will reduce preparation of unnecessary meals.
Buying Products
Encourage your planning team and contractors to look for products that:
Are reusable (e.g., name tags, binders, grease boards).Have recycled content (especially postconsumer).Use little or no packaging or packaging that contains recycled or reused materials.Are recyclable or compostable on site or in a community program.
Collecting Recyclables
Encourage attendees to recycle with visible signs, written announcements, and opening remarks. Also, inform event contractors, exhibitors, and vendors about recycling procedures prior to the event. Arrange with your recycling contractor for an appropriate number of containers to be strategically placed throughout the site.
Promoting Your Event's Environmental Features
Make sure that event attendees are aware of its environmental features. Take the opportunity to exhibit your leadership and share your environmental commitment with others.
Monitoring and Evaluating Results Enable You To:
Document and track problems, successes, and failures of event initiatives. Quantify results and measure the effectiveness of initiatives. Promote the environmental achievements of the event.
Step 4: Evaluate the Event and Celebrate Its Success
Measuring Recycling Collection and Waste Generation
As collected recyclables are removed, look for food waste mistakenly discarded in recycling bins or recyclables placed in the wrong bins. Try to determine the cause of any contamination such as inadequate signage or poorly placed containers. Request that the recycling vendor and trash hauler report on exact quantities of materials and trash removed from the meeting site.
Surveying the Participants
Some meeting planners have done exit polls asking respondents to comment on the environmental aspects of the event. Also, seek suggestions to improve the environmental quality of your next event.
Promoting Environmental Achievements
Inform management, shareholders, sponsors, contractors, and the public about your success using your internal newsletter, bulletin board system, or annual report. Prepare press releases highlighting the environmental results of your event.
Source: EPA
Even More Tips for a Greener Workplace
Look into telecommuting. Every commute not taken saves on money, time and fossil fuel. Plus, studies have found that telecommuting boosts productivity too.
Switch to fair-trade, shade-grown coffee and a reusable coffee filter for the office coffee pot. Reusable filters reduce waste and shade-grown coffee protects biodiversity in coffee-growing countries.
Stock your lunchroom with foods provided by local farmers. As many colleges and universities have already discovered, locally grown foods are more appealing and healthful than the processed stuff shipped cross-country.
Bring back the errand-boy or girl. Rather than having lots of employees running in and out of the office for various reasons throughout the day, designate one person who can handle most or all of the out-of-office tasks in one trip, whether it’s picking up lunch, dropping off mail at the post office, making deliveries, etc.
Watch the paper and ink. Avoid printing documents that could just as easily be emailed, and print necessary papers on both sides. It also helps to institute a recycling program, and to switch to recycled paper and water-based inks.
Consider replacing aging desktop computers with laptops instead, which can use up to 70 percent less electricity and generate less heat waste.
Turn off any equipment that doesn’t need to be on when you’re not in the office, and -- if possible -- unplug them too. Every computer left turned on overnight and every coffee pot left plugged in eats up electricity and costs your company money.
Source: Suite101
3 Easy Steps You Can Take Now to Create a Greener Workplace
Start a bring-your-own coffee mug policy for the break room and ditch the foam cups. Your company will reduce waste and save money as well.
Bring real plants into the office. Fake greenery might be low-maintenance, but the real thing adds beauty and oxygen to your surroundings.
Reprogram the thermostat. Each degree warmer you leave the thermostat in summer, and each degree cooler you set it in the winter can save 6 to 8 percent in energy costs.
