As we approach the final working days before Christmas and New Year, this is a great chance to start setting goals and resolutions for 2023. This time of year presents a perfect opportunity to set ourselves up for the new working year and to start 2023 as we mean to go on. With all the exciting prospects that the start of a fresh year brings, it can be easy to forget to consider sustainability when setting resolutions. That’s why we’ve put together this list of easy ways to promote sustainability in your workplace, which will be sure to make a positive impact on the environment. Keep reading to find out all our tips and tricks for a more sustainable office, and then discover our important tip on where to go for environmental services for your office or workplace.
Focus on the Kitchen
The office kitchen provides many opportunities to promote sustainability. Consider the amount of single-use plastic or packaging in your kitchen. Perhaps you provide individual sachets of coffee or sugar when you could utilise products that aren’t individually wrapped.
Why not think about putting a ban on disposable plastics when it comes to lunches? This would encourage your workers to bring their lunch in reusable containers and to find alternative ways of wrapping food. Less cling-wrap ending up in landfill, and a more sustainable office environment, what could be better?
Plus, you can always consider a ban on disposable coffee cups – don’t provide them in the kitchen and encourage workers to bring their own reusable cups. Check out our article all about reusable cups in the workplace to find out more about their environmental benefits.
Consider the Trees
Printing in an office is an inevitability. There will be times throughout each day when printing out a hard copy of a file or document cannot be avoided. This is a fact that can be hard to work around. However, you can encourage your office to be more careful and mindful of their printing habits and try to reduce them. This starts by cutting out unnecessary printing – think: could the digital copy of this suffice?
There are also ways to be more sustainable with the printer itself. Choose double-sided printing where possible or reduce the size of the document to fit more on one page. You help by implementing simple guidelines for workers to follow on what should be kept in digital format, and what may be printed. These should be flexible guidelines, rather than strict rules, and will need to be specific to the function and needs of your particular workplace.
Another step you can take is to avoid traditional printer paper and instead provide a more sustainable, eco-friendly option. You can check out this WWF post about the harmful impacts of traditional paper, and then read this Ethical Paper guide to help you choose eco-friendly printer paper.
Set up a Sustainability Committee
This is one way to promote sustainability that can ensure the efforts of your workplace continue to grow and evolve. Consider asking for volunteers for a sustainability committee, whose members can continually look for new ways to improve sustainability around the office.
The roles of a sustainability group are many. The members of the group can bring new ideas and sustainable suggestions to the office, and then implement them in the workplace. They can congratulate and reward workers for exhibiting sustainable behaviours and making eco-friendly choices. Plus, the group members can encourage sustainability by leading by example, and by promoting these behaviours. Such a committee can lead and champion sustainability in the office and keep your workplace on track throughout the year!
Reduce Business Travel
Like printer paper, business travel can be somewhat of a necessary evil – there are just some instances that it cannot be avoided. That being said, there are certainly ways that you can reduce business travel and replace it with digital alternatives.
Since the pandemic, we have all had to adapt the way that we conduct things like meetings. The face-to-face meeting may not be as popular now, but the fact that our skills on Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom are improved is actually good for the environment. When considering business travel, we have the opportunity to think, could this be done in a virtual way? The fact that we are all more proficient in virtual meetings and business means that this is one way to reduce business travel.
With business travel contributing significantly to carbon emissions, it’s important that we have options like virtual meetings to replace travel where possible.
Do You Need Environmental Consulting?
Here at Alpha Environmental, we pride ourselves on being experts in providing environmental services for offices and workplaces. Backed by 23 years of industry experience, we offer exceptional customer service, as well as environmental solutions that exceed the industry standard. If you need environmental consultants or occupational hygiene services in 2023, look no further than Alpha Environmental.
If you need environmental consulting, please contact us at 1300 039 181, or fill out our online contact form, and we will happily get back to you.
