COVID-19 has dominated the headlines over the past 12 months. However, climate change remains a very real threat to all of us and one that it’s crucial to bear in mind as we (hopefully) start to return to some version of normal life later this year. To avoid catastrophic climate breakdown CO2 emissions need to drop 45% by 2030, which is a significant figure. Businesses have a big role to play in making this happen – for many, the first step will be to make office environments carbon neutral.
- Focus on minimising paper use. Offices are some of the worst culprits when it comes to generating large volumes of paper that often then ends up in the bin. Take a good look at the way that your office uses paper – could you make changes to minimise this? That could be sending documents by email instead of printing them out or using cloud, instead of physical, storage. Where printing is unavoidable can it be double sided or using scrap or recycled paper?
- Make sure you turn everything off when the office is empty. This is a very simple way to reduce emissions and one that will also help your business to keep costs under control. Put routines in place to ensure that someone is responsible for checking everything has been turned off at the end of the day – this includes lights and electrics in areas such as storage spaces, which can often get turned on and forgotten. Make sure that your computers go into sleep mode when they’re not in use so they’re not consuming power unnecessarily.
- Use less heat. If you have an office full of people then you can’t simply expect them to work in a cold space – you won’t get the best from your team and could receive a lot of complaints. However, even just turning the heat down by a single degree or two can make a big difference to the amount of energy that your business is consuming and won’t be that noticeable to those in the building.
- Recycle all your electronic items. Your business may have settled into a fairly comfortable routine when it comes to paper recycling. However, that’s not the only option available – electronics can also be dealt with in this much more environmentally friendly way that ensures you’re not contributing to landfill. Some manufacturers will take back their own electronics to recycle or you can find an e-recycling service close to you.
- Redesign or refurbish. If you have the resources then redesigning or refurbishing your office to make it more carbon neutral can be very effective – and also save you money in the long run. Replacing out of date boilers, updating insulation, introducing heat saving measures and changes to the way that your office uses energy can all make a huge difference to how carbon neutral your business is overall.
Being a carbon neutral business is increasingly going to become a goal in the years to come. These are some simple steps you can take towards this objective right now.
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