Making Your Office a Greener Place: A Primer

Making your place of work more environmentally-friendly can be a challenge. Here are some small steps that everyone can take, even when faced with a stubborn boss or backwards company policies. Be an eco-worker, as the Times calls it, and offers tips on how employees can begin making offices greener. (note: these are pretty obvious to TreeHugger readers but it doesn't hurt to remind ourselves)

Start by doing simple things such as printing out less of those unnecessary documents from your computer and thus saving paper.

Wear a sweater-and turn the heat down. For every degree in reduced building temperature , cost is reduced and less carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere.

Turning off the computer at night saves energy. Some argue that turning it off and on wears out the components, but many companies buy new technology every few years in any case-before the computers can ever wear out.
Urge your company to buy recycled paper. The typical office worker goes through 10,000 sheets a year-that's an eighth of a tree.

Check and see if your office uses fair trade coffees and teas.

Conference calls save time and fuel and energy, when appropriate.

See if your company has social responsibility as part of its corporate policy and in its annual report. Does it include measurable targets for improving green business practices.

And don't forget the little things: according to Friends of the Earth charity " if we each used one less staple a day, it could save 120 tons of steel a year. The stapleless stapler (previously covered on TreeHugger) from www. naturalcollections.com binds up to 4 sheets of paper. via ::Times Online