Top Tips on How to Green Your Workforce

In any organisation there are three things that make a difference to how low energy and how sustainable a building is:

1. The building itself (insulation and energy efficient equipment)
2. The way the building is managed (providing recycling, being maintained well)
3. Behaviour of the building users. Even if a building is low energy and has lots of environmental facilities, if people are not interested in the impacts of their actions on the environment and leave for instance the lights, monitors and copiers on all night, it could waste a lot of energy.

This document focuses on the behaviour of the building users and how you can inspire and influence your colleagues to change their behaviour towards greener actions to make their office a really green place to work.

Get Internal Green Behaviour Team started

1. Get project team together (3 – 5 people depending on size of organisation/company)
2. Agree on main specific and realistic focus of project team, e.g. behaviour change which will show in increased recycling rates and other behaviours such as switching off monitors, lights etc
3. Get management on board through getting their sponsorship and buy-in in one-on-one meetings
4. Launch your initiative with a green quiz (or engaging/ fun activity) at an all staff meeting. After the quiz , tell people about who you are, what you do and how you will do it
5. Get first green action started (e.g. put up green factoids around the building and green tips)
6. Ask staff to volunteer to be a ‘green ambassador’ for the their floor and/or team to lead by example and to be available for questions and answers
7. Update staff on a regular basis at staff meetings and/or staff newsletter
8. Get next action going (e.g. create posters with green messages and put around the building)
9. Run Green Inductions for new staff members and volunteers, i.e. one of project team members takes new staff members in groups through green actions that staff members are expected to take and explain recycling facilities to them. Make green induction open to ‘old’ staff members.
10. Have fun – change is possible

Areas of focus

Paper

Producing 1 tonne of recycled paper saves at least 30,000 litres of water, 3000 – 4000 KWh electricity (enough for an average 3 bedroom house for one year) and

95 % of air pollution than producing paper from virgin fibres.

1. Switch from virgin paper to at least recycled paper or even better paper made from 100% post consumer waste such as Steinbeis Vision.
2. Get your IT-Team to set up your computer to default to double-sided printing
3. Set your photocopier to double-sided photocopying when you have to make copies
4. Do you really need to print every email and document or are there some that you can read on-screen? Put up signs saying: ‘Think before you print, do you really need to print or photocopy?’
5. Reuse paper that has only been used on one side for printing and scrap paper
6. Collect your waste paper including newspapers and magazines and get it picked up once a week for recycling, the council has a service for this or company such as Bryson House
7. Collect cardboard and other mixed paper to also be recycled by the council has a service for this or company such as Bryson House
8. Reuse envelopes as much as you can (open them cleanly) – You can buy reuse labels from Friends of the Earth and other NGO’s, plus some stationers.

Set up recycling facilities on each of your office floors (e.g. in kitchen area), i.e. containers for white paper, mixed paper, mixed glass, plastic containers for number 1 + 2 plastics (triangle in bottom indicates type of plastic, 1 and 2 are recyclable), cans and aluminium foil.

Electricity

1. Switch off lights when you leave a room and the office in the evening. Lighting an empty office of an average size overnight wastes enough energy to heat water for 1000 cups of coffee.
2. Switch off your monitor every time you leave your desk for more than one minute and certainly over night. You can save 66 % of a total PCs energy use.
3. Make sure that the last person switches off the photocopier when leaving the office at night. A photocopier left on overnight uses enough energy to print 1500 laser copies.
4. Switch to energy saving light bulbs. They use less than a quarter of the electricity of their equivalents and can last up to 12 times longer.
5. Make sure your office energy is on an Eco tariff and from a renewable source, such as wind.

Travel

1. Inspire your staff members to find the greenest way to travel to work. Offer them a season ticket loan or bicycle loan for example.
2. Provide staff members with a bike shed or other safe place to park their bike so that they know that their bike is safe.
3. Review your work travel policy and make sure that travel done for meetings is as low carbon as possible. Encourage staff to travel by train or bus whenever possible
4. Do you really need to have so many meetings? And if yes, can you do some over the phone or get videoconferencing set up?

Fair Trade

If you do provide staff members with coffee, tea and sugar make sure that you purchase Fair Trade products (http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/).

The Fair Trade mark has various regulations which encourage farmers to grow crops sustainably.

Milk

Switch from tetrapak (carton) milk to get glass milk bottles from your local milk delivery service or recycle your tetra packs by posting them to England. For details go to: http://www.tetrapakrecycling.co.uk/consumers.asp

Water

1. If you make tea or coffee, only heat as much water as you need. It saves water and energy.
2. Get yourself a flask for your drinking water consumption. You save plastic and money.
3. If you have ‘old’ (non-dual flush toilet system) put ‘hippos’ in the water cistern of your toilets to reduce the amount of water that is used for each flush. If you cannot install ‘hippos’ simply fill up a couple of half litre or a litre plastic bottle and place it gently in your cistern.
4. If you think of replacing your toilets do get dual-flash system toilets. You can save up to 5 litres of water per flush
5. When taps need replacing, replace them with low water flow taps such as spray taps

Cleaning products

1. Get rid of chemical laden cleaning products (eg washing-up liquid and hand soap) and replace them with more friendly products from Ecover (www.ecover.com)

More information

For information on environmental monitoring and reporting please contact:

Ethical Property Foundation
http://www.ethicalproperty.org.uk/

Global Action Network
http://www.globalactionplan.org.uk/

Forum for the Future
http://www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/

Envirowise
http://www.envirowise.gov.uk/home

Views of other users