Office Recycling Tips

A short list of helpful recycling tips for the office.

Paper

Think before you print - do you really need to print?

• Short emails?
• Short documents?

Reduce and reuse paper

If you do need to print, print on paper that has already been printed on one side.

Make sure you choose the correct paper drawer on your computer settings before you press print

• Put paper that has only been used on one side in the reuse paper box above the printer or straight away in drawer three of the printer
• Print two pages per side whenever possible by going to ‘print' and then ‘properties'
• If you do need to print an email, cut down the length by pressing ‘forward to' and by highlighting and deleting the bits that you don't need then press print
• Take a pile of recycling paper and stick it together as a note bloc
• Cut A4 recycling sheets in halfs or quarters, take a paper clip and you will have made your perfect own post-it

Envelopes

Keep envelopes and reuse them as much as you can - if you need to have new envelopes get ones made from 100% post consumer waste.

A3 paper reuse

Rather than putting A3 sheets of paper in the white recycling bag after they've only been used on one side, ask your local school or nursery if it would like them for children to draw on the back. Or see if any of your work colleagues have young children who can re-use the paper. Alternatively, use them instead of flipcharts in meetings.

Electricity

Did you know? You could microwave 6 lunches with the amount of power that a computer monitor uses if you leave it on over night. Turn off your monitor whenever you are not using your PC and when you go home at night.

And did you know? Lighting an empty office overnight wastes enough energy to heat water for 1000 cups of coffee or tea. Switch off the lights when you leave the building.

And: A photocopier left on overnight uses enough energy to print 1500 laser copies.

And: If you're leaving a room, it is worth turning off the lights after just 2 minutes in order to save energy.

What percentage of a total PCs energy use do you save if you turn off the monitor? 66%. Turn your monitor off when you leave your desk!

You can save energy by turning of the lights after just 2 minutes of leaving the room

Paper clips

60 cars worth of steel could be saved if every one of the 10 million office workers in the UK used one less steel staple a day and used a paper clip instead.

Plastic Bags

On average each person consumes 290 plastic bags per year. Say No to plastic bags and replace them with cloth bags. Cloth bags can be nicely folded away in your bag or pocket and always be there when you need it! Enjoy your clean shopping!

Plastic Bottles

Buying a flask for your daily water supply could save 150 plastic bottles per year assuming that you buy three per week, assuming you buy more than three per week you could save up to 365 plastic bottles per year!

Why pay 10,000 times the price for bottled water when the same thing flows from the tap? Get yourselves a metal reusable hiking bottle (available in any outdoor shop) - it will save loads of resources and energy.

If you are not keen on drinking tap water, you could buy a water filter which makes tap water perfectly drinkable.

Aluminium and polystyrene recipients

We produce 20 times more plastic a year than we did 50 years ago? Making your own lunch instead of buying from a sandwich shop saves on plastic and/or aluminum packaging, and could also save you approx £4 a day or £1,000 per year! If you are not into home-food-cooking you could take your own plastic container to the food/sandwich shop or re-use the plastic containers your lunch is packed in.

Plastic carrier bags take 1000 years to break down in landfill. Get a funky re-useable or cotton bag instead for your shopping trips and say 'no thanks' to plastic carrier bags. Friends of the Earth cloth bags are available on line.

Recycling a single plastic bottle can conserve enough energy to light a 60W lightbulb for up to 6 hours. Try to avoid plastic bottles altogether and get yourself a flask (available at any outdoor shop, warehouse and Argos) for your daily water supply. It's clean and much cheaper!)

Every year, an estimated 171/2 billion plastic bags are given away by supermarkets. This is equivalent to over 290 bags for every person in the UK. Use a cloth bag for your lunches and other shopping tips .

346,500 tonnes of plastics packaging waste were recycled in 2004 in the UK. When your lunch no longer comes on a plate but in a plastic box your environmental impact shoots up. Take your own plastic container when you go out to buy your lunch and refuse plastic cutlery.

During 2004 plastic bottles worth around £27 million were disposed of at a cost of £100 million. Avoid plastic bottles altogether and get yourself a flask for your drinking water.

On average, every UK household uses 440 plastic bottles each year, of which just 24 are recycled. We use 500 million plastic bags in the UK every week. They take around 1000 years to decay in landfill sites. Imagine your life without plastic bottles and plastic bags? Try it out - now!

Did you know?
Recycling 1 kg of aluminium saves up to 6 kg of bauxite, 4 kg of chemical products and 14 kWh of electricity

A recycled aluminium can saves enough energy to run a television for three hours

Water

Fill kettles with enough water for your needs but not to the brim. This will reduce our water and energy use

You can use less water by turning the hot tap down, rather than the cold tap up, if you require cooler water.

Use a plug in the sink and a bowl of water to wash cups and plates rather than washing under the tap over a plughole.

Buying bottled water costs you money, and the bottles generate unnecessary use of glass or plastic. Drink water from the tap instead - our water is much cleaner than it was 15 years ago thanks to EU laws, and is perfectly safe to drink. Alternatively, get a water filter - some manufacturers recycle the plastic cartridges in the water filters (see for example http://www.brita.co.uk ) - or you can buy water filters with fabric sachets to filter the water (see http://www.naturalcollection.com ).

Compost

Friends of the Earth offices in London collected 1680 kilos of compost per year? This is 1680 kilos of waste less going to landfill. Make sure you compost everything from tea bags to apple cores. You can get small composting bins for your office from:
www.naturalcollection.com a keen gardener in the office would be happy to take the compost home for their garden.