Five tips for a more sustainable workplace

Is your workplace a haven of good habits, or a place of sustainability sins? At home, you probably sort your waste from your recycling, turn off the lights when you leave a room, only use the AC when it’s a stinker outside, and bring reusable bags to the supermarket.  But what about at work?

Here are our top five tips to help your workplace be more sustainably savvy – sometimes it’s just about treating your office a bit more like your home.

1. Does your office offer individual sachets of sugar, individually wrapped biscuits or crackers, bottled water, or coffee bags in plastic sachets? Speak to whoever is in charge of stocking the kitchen at your workplace, and encourage a change in buying habits to be more like home. Half of the world’s plastic goes into products that are only used once. Use large air tight containers that can be restocked with the kitchen items you regularly use, and source alternatives to those that use excessive and unnecessary packaging. For any necessary soft plastic waste, this can be recycled too. Just put it in a separate bag and take it to your nearest supermarket where they have soft plastic waste recycle bins.

2. Did you know that most takeaway coffee cups aren’t actually recyclable and will end up in landfill? Although they look like paper, most contain a plastic lining that will not biodegrade. By using one cup a day you are creating 10kg of landfill waste a year!  Why not gift your team members a reusable coffee cup and set a challenge for them to use it for a month. Encourage employees with weekly updates and rewards, and give prizes at the end of the month for whoever succeeded.  It takes 21 days to create a habit – the environment will thank you!

3. You wouldn’t go to bed and leave the TV on, so why go home from work and leave your computer on? All businesses are looking for ways to reduce energy use and the simple act of switching off your computer is one easy way to do that. The estimated saving for 100 employees shutting down their computers at 5pm each working day for a year is $3,600. Switching off monitors, while still important, only equates to just a $100 saving for the same period. Think about hanging posters around the office or putting stickers on everyone’s computer to remind people to switch off. Encourage everyone to switch off lights, printers, hot water heaters, and photocopiers at the same time.

4. Limiting the use of paper in your office is a no-brainer when it comes to saving money spent on paper, toner, printer maintenance, as well as reducing energy usage and the obvious benefits for our friends, the trees! Simple initiatives can be put in place to reduce the amount of paper you use. Consider setting double-sided printing as a default on all computers, reduce the number of printers in your office to make it less convenient to print, monitor printing across the workplace, and offer incentives to teams to reduce it. Also ensure your company is a digital friendly workplace so employees are less reliant on having to print documents.

5. Set up a Green Team! Do a shout out to encourage a few sustainably minded employees to form a committee to encourage sustainable practice in the workplace. They can educate employees about sustainability through internal communications and set challenges that employees can get involved in, like a printing challenge or Keep Cup challenge.  They can also jump on board with external initiatives like Landcare Week, Plastic Free July or National Ride to Work Day. By making sustainability a focus for a few key employees, they can be your champions and influencers, and bring their colleagues along for the journey.