The day-to-day actions of regular working people collectively have an impact on the environment, and here are tips on how to be "greener" in your office.
Each week at ENN we bring you stories about what some large corporations are doing to help the environment -- and what some are doing to it. We focus often on those companies because they have such a big ecological footprint on the earth. However, that doesn't mean that the day-to-day actions of regular working people don't collectively have an impact. They certainly do - for better or worse.
One organization in the UK publishes "action recipes" that are designed to help you and me to be as "green" as possible in our everyday work lives.
The Environment Council bills itself as "dedicated to improving decision making processes so that people can build lasting solutions to environmental issues." Though its primary mission is to be an environmental consultant to corporate executives and major company stakeholders (that is, constituent groups as opposed to "shareholders") -- a consensus builder if you will -- its website provides valuable information for everyone, even those not in a major dispute.
For example, one of The Environment Council's "action recipes" tells us how to save paper, and the reasons why that's important. The pamphlet point out that "making paper, even when it’srecycled, uses a lot of resources ”“ energy,water and chemicals ”“ and produces undesirable waste products and effluents... The UK importsaround 40% of itspaper requirementscontributing topollution fromtransportation."
Among the suggestions is "use your word processor’s templates for report covers,so they are right first time" and "don’t automatically print e-mails ”“ read them onscreen whenever you can, and file them electronically."
The "action recipe" also reminds us of common sense things we can do such as saving used paper for scribbling and internal notes, and making sure our documents are mistake-free before printing them.
You can find this and other tips on The Environment Council's website at www.the-environment-council.org.uk; the paper-saving "action recipe" can be found here:Effective Paper Saving.
Of course, read it on your computer. Don't print it!
Source: Greenbiz.com; The Environment Council
