Since it is Earth Day and being sustainable is in our DNA, we came up with a list of 10 simple ways Office Essentials can help you be more sustainable at work. We’ve done a lot of research on green office supplies, and how businesses can incorporate them into their daily routine without spending more money.
These tips are just the tip of the iceberg. We would love to meet with you and geek out on it in much more detail. Use the form at the bottom of this post to get in touch with us.
1. Buy Local
All of the following tips are made easier and more environmentally friendly by partnering with Office Essentials. We can partner with you to make your business more sustainable. From consolidating deliveries with a local source to reduce CO2, to bringing you sustainable products in sustainable packaging, no one can match our research or commitment to making offices greener.
2. Recycle Empty Toner Cartridges
This one is a no-brainer. Every year over 400 million cartridges with a combined weight of 200 million pounds are buried in our nation’s landfills. And once there, they never disintegrate.
3. Reuse shipping boxes
Whether you use them for storage or shipping your own products out to your customers this is a great way to not only be friendlier to the environment but save your company money. And if you don’t have any use for them, our drivers will pick them back up from you at your next delivery and reuse them for future orders.
4. Electronic Invoicing
Did you know that in America alone, a year’s worth of invoices takes up as much landfill space as 10 football fields each stacked more than 100 feet deep with paper?
5. Use Recycled Paper
Using recycled office paper can make a huge impact on reducing your office’s overall carbon footprint. Unfortunately, there’s a perception that eco-friendly products are cost-prohibitive. OE can work with you to help you put dollars into recycled copy paper while offsetting the spending in other supply areas.
6. Get Rid of Paper Coffee Cups (or use sustainable ones)
Americans drink 16 billion cups of coffee served in disposable paper cups every year. If you would like to reduce your company’s impact on that number, we can help you switch to eco-friendly drink cups; hot, cold, or both.
7. Use Environmentally friendly cleaning products
By doing so, you can minimize harmful impacts to custodial workers and building occupants, improve indoor air quality, and reduce water and ambient air pollution while also ensuring the effectiveness of cleaning in removing biological and other contaminants from the building’s interior.
8. Conserve Energy – especially your electronic devices
While you shouldn’t forget about turning off lights in unused rooms, your electronic devices being left on makes a much larger impact. It is estimated that workers waste over $1 billion in electricity every year just by leaving their computers on when they leave the office. You can reduce the harmful impact of your computers and other peripherals by employing the sleep mode on them — which turns on power-saving features after periods of inactivity, or by turning them off at night.
9. Get some plants
Having plants in the office provides numerous benefits, they improve air quality and they make your office look fresh and vibrant. On top of that, studies have shown that plants in the office make workers more productive.
10. Make it Company Policy
Find a business supplies partner that can work with you to develop a plan that can help your company, (like Office Essentials), that can work with you to implement your plan.
- Evaluate your Office Products Procurement Process
- Outline a sustainable plan for your goals
- Document your success
- Educate employees on recycling measures, product certifications and more
- Provide on-going guidance and ideas
