Greening Your Office: Cut Costs & Reduce Impact

Chelsea Green:

We spend a large amount of our time in the office, where we use considerable amounts of energy and resources. "Greening the office" will therefore have significant benefits, both environmentally and financially. As many other businesses have experienced, small changes to your office practices and procurements--mostly costing nothing--will reduce the company's expenditure and improve your sales. By being proactive, you stay ahead of impending government legislation, as climate change and mandatory reductions in carbon emissions are being debated. It makes compelling, realistic business sense to green up the office, and helps in our battle with climate change.

There are many arguments for going green in the office:

* Minimize overheads by reducing
* use of consumables
* energy costs
* costs of waste disposal
* water bills
* expenditures on office hardware
* transportation bills

Read the whole story: Chelsea Green

Comments

[rahdesign]

Great stuff. Nortel recently showed a way to save energy in an office environment simply be looking at the cost of energy that technology infrastructure uses (data networks tend to suck a tremendous amount of power). They even created an "Energy Efficiency Calculator" to see how much your network is using today and how much you might be able to save. (for the sake of transparency - Yes, I'm a Nortel employee)

You can find the calculator at: www.nortel.com/energycalculator

There have also been some interesting initiatives lately by Cisco and others to help companies optimize the cooling of their data centers. By coordinating the amount of energy that a data center is using with the HVAC systems, companies can realize additional savings.

All of these things combined - energy efficient equipment, optimized data centers, etc. - can lead to significant reductions in energy usage and a company's carbon footprint.

[eggman]

A major benefit of green buildings as defined by recognized standards such as LEED and Green Globes is occupant health and well-being. Indoor air quality is a large component to a building being certified green. Reduction of PCBs, ozone-deplating refrigerants, indoor and outdoor pesticides, urea-laden carpet and chemical cleaners all reduce "sick building" syndrome, which presumably (hard to prove) improves occupant health, reduces absenteeism and promotes productivity.

Another issue addresed by LEED is "Daylighting and Views". Modern workplace design is to put private offices against the building core and get rid of high cubicle walls to allow more natural light and views into the space. I used to sit in a cubicle cut off from other people and never seeing the sun. Nearby was an office with a window that was rarely used--the salesperson was always traveling. Now I have tremendous views of the city skyline and lakefront, and by standing up i can see which of my co-workers are on the phone, which are out and which are available. I guess we save on lighting costs but that's not the real benefit.