Challenge 10: Greening your Workplace

So, you’ve taken all your toxic cleaning products to the depot, switched all your lights to compact fluorescents and started to hang up your laundry instead of using the power-hungry dryer at home. But then, when you get to work, the bathroom sparkles with chemicals, the lights and computers have been left running all night and the only cups available in the cafeteria are made of Styrofoam.
No wonder many of us feel like a split personality between David Suzuki and a private Airbus-flying Saudi prince, the green version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
So, it’s time to turn our green eyes to the office.

Challenge: Make one green change at your workplace.

The Motivation: Most of us spend more time at work than we do at home. Shouldn’t our offices then reflect our environmental ideals? If you recycle at home, why wouldn’t you expect to do it at work, where you spend twice the waking hours?
Plus, when it comes to combating climate change, that’s where we can make more headway. In Toronto, more carbon emissions spew from industrial and commercial buildings than they do from residences, according to a recent report by the Toronto Atmospheric Fund.
Think about it this way: if you change all the light bulbs in your home from incandescents to compact fluorescents, you might save about 800 kilowatt hours — just under a month’s worth of your home’s electricity. But, if you get just one floor of a downtown office building to turn off its lights at night, that could mean 24,000 fewer kilowatt-hours of electricity — enough to power 20 homes for the entire year!
Plus, you might just then convince all the people who work there to start lighting down at home….

Process: Choose one thing you can realistically change. Make is something you are passionate about. Here, at The Star, a colleague got infuriated at all the paper being unnecessarily printed. So, he printed up the instructions on how to set the computer to double-print documents, and posted it above a popular printer. Now, more than a dozen reporters have changed their printing ways….
Some examples of campaigns you could launch (these are all things we are looking to implement at The Star, but Peter will write about that later):

1. Reduce your workplace’s office paper use – by setting all your photocopiers and printers to print double-sided by default. If they are older models without that option, set up a system where used paper is stocked back in the machines for a second use. If you workplace uses virgin tree pulp paper, try to convert them to stock paper with at least 30 percent recycled content – saving not only trees, but energy and water. If you are worried about quality, note the U.S. government has printed exclusively on the stuff for almost 10 years. The Seattle city government uses only 100 per cent recycled paper and reduced their paper use by 21 per cent to pay for the difference.  To see how many trees your workplace could save, check out The Paper Calculator.
2. Computer down. When you leave at night, turn off your computer. And get your colleagues to do the same. Make it a policy. Just by doing that, you’ll cut every computer’s electricity use by a quarter.
3. Light down. Do you work in one of those buildings where the lights glow 24 hours a day? If so, can you find out who controls the off switch and convince him/her to flip it at night? If not, can you convince him to change the lighting for a more energy-efficient kind? If you are lucky, and work in a place with an old-fashioned on-off switch, you could post a sticker above it reminding the last person out to flip it down.
4. De-Styrofoam your workplace. More than 8 billion disposable cups are tossed in Canada every year. Make your office an exception. One easy solution is to head to Value Village and buy all your colleagues second-hand porcelain cups for 25 cents each. Or, you can do what Toronto Community Housing did, and have special corporate coffee mugs – with lids – made for all the employees.
5. De-Auto the office. Three-quarters of Canadians drive alone to work. Set up a carpooling database for your colleagues, so they know who near them is driving to work. Or, could you reserve better parking for people who arrive with more than themselves in the car?

Most of these are easy things a company could do to make a difference. But, bureaucracy moves slowly. So be patient. Form a workplace green team to help you work on some basic goals. If get really serious, can bring in a corporate sustainability consultant to draft up plan for you.

Cost: Your time.

Savings: For the company, less electricity means less money – sometimes a lot less. It’s estimated the average bank tower could save $2 million a year by turning off the lights at night. The company will also gain improved employee morale, loyalty and a stronger public image, according to a recent report by the Society of Human Resource Managers.
For you, you’ll save your green conscience.

-- Catherine Porter

Comments

[klode]

I just found your site and I like the way you think. Some thoughts about item #2 (Computer down) in challenge 10.

Short comment:
I think that in practice the reduction would be better than 50%, up to as much as 70%.

Long version:
How did you arrive at a reduction of 25%? If we assume a computer will be powered on for only ten hours every work day (leaving it on for lunch, breaks, etc.), that's 50 hours per week out of a total of 168 hours, so the reduction is 118 hours, or a 70% reduction versus leaving the computer powered on all the time.

You may have assumed that during idle periods, computers will switch to a low power mode that consumes only 15% of the full-power usage, which would result in the 25% reduction you give. However, the reality is that businesses continue to use relatively old computers, most of which aren't configured to switch to low power mode by themselves, and plenty of old computers don't even switch the monitor to low power mode.

Claude

[Jeremy Day]

Though you've heard about Earth Hour, I invite you to really investigate the difference this can make, and challenge you all to help in making a difference - the harsh reality is: if you're not part of the solution, you're unfortunately part of the problem...

...If you're out and about for Earth Hour, cafe Taste is going to completely go without power - our light will be via candles, our music will be live acoustic, our food will be cold-prepared. We're even stocking-up on ice to maintain our food stores while our fridges are off...

...I hope next Saturday you can be part of the demonstration of the power of will...

Sincerest regards;

Jeremy Day
Wine Steward
cafe Taste
1330 Queen Street West
416.536.7748
www.cafetaste.ca

[Elaine]

Hello, I just read your article about making the workplace green. What a great article! At my office we've started making sure all the print marketing in our department is on FSC paper and we've put out a note to everyone that the company that supplies our copy toner takes back empty toner bottles. It's a slow process, but it's getting there!

In your article, you noted that you are having a problem finding a stain remover. I've been using non-toxic cleaners for a few years now, and after working as a server in restaurants for years I've discovered that if you scrub the stain (rub the fabric together) with some dish soap, you'll almost get everything out. The quicker you can get to the stain, the better. For anything else, get Simple Green, a biodegradable automotive degreaser. Spray on and leave it on for about 20 minutes and throw in the washing machine.

[Edward W. Stanley]

Decreasing electrical usage increases its cost. Its not about 'how much we use' but 'how it is generated', geothermal power, and improvements in the transportation of power can fix that.

Look up fungibility and economies of scale.

Fluorescent light bulbs contain mercury in doses high enough to be poisonous.

Paper comes from mostly recycled paper anyway. You need to pay extra for fresh paper. Further, lower quality, recycled paper jams more often and therefore requires more servicing on the printer and copiers. Double sized printing for example causes generally more jams and dysfunction of printing devices.

It is short sighted people who do not understand how printing devices work, ironic for someone who works at a newspaper, that mistake certain print output styles for 'waste'.

I do not come from any consortium or lobby group, I'm only an individual that sees bad science trickling down to masses.

Purchasing products such as cars creates jobs, a significant amount of car parts come from recycled metals. Some cars its almost 90%.

You want to decrease electrical use in the homes and business but want cars to run off of it. That is what is called a contradiction.

IF you ever click on most of the links to people who post to this site, they are selling some herbal product or marketing some tv show that didn't get picked up for whatever reason.

I am truly discouraged by this meme.

---------------------
From Catherine (still no baby): Edward, this is simply not true. To start, while CFLs have a small amount of mercury, the majority of mercury released into our environment and currently poisoning us comes from coal-fired electricity plants. So, the argument goes: use less electricity with CFLs and throw them away carefully ie. hazardous depot, you are thereby releasing LESS mercury into the environment, even here in Ontario where we don't use as much coal-fired electricity.
Second, your stats on recycled paper are simply wrong. Most offices DON'T use it at ALL. Mostly because it costs MORE not less. Walk into Staples and see for yourself. And, while 15 years ago the bulkier recycled paper may have clogged your printers, all studies since then show it does not any more than 100 per cent virgin paper. And it's not just environmental NGOs saying that, but big companies like IBM and governments, like the city of Seattle. This is from "conserveatree's listening report": A number of controlled tests have indicated no difference in performance between recycled and virgin office paper. One was conducted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors (1998) with Cannon, Hewlett-Packard, Lexmark and the U.S. Government Printing Office testing over 2 million sheets of paper on a wide variety of copiers, laser printers and ink jet printers. Recycled paper with 30% postconsumer content performed equivalently to papers with 20-25% postconsumer and to virgin papers. Ongoing testing is reported by Buyers Laboratory, Inc., an independent office products testing laboratory, which has for many years used recycled as well as virgin paper in all its tests of different brands of copiers. It reports "no noticeable difference in the runnability of recycled paper versus virgin paper." Here is the link to see for yourself: http://www.conservatree.org/paperlisteningstudy/RecyEquip/recyequipsum.html

[Edward W. Stanley]

While I also took time to speak to a lovely lady, Wendy at the Richmond Hill Staples store.

The current pricing for Staples brand paper is the following:

100% recycled paper $6.95 / ream 92 brightness 20 pound

30% recycled paper 5.95 / ream 92 brightness 20 pound

Regular multiuse paper which she noted comes from as I concluded 'tree farms' is regularly priced at 5.99 but is on special which is 3.99 each if you buy two of them.

Note the brightness for this paper is 96 and still 20 pound.

The price for either is near the same, and isn't paper technically a carbon store.

Is it possible that the increase in price is not that it cost more to make but, that paper is generally sold as a loss leader and the fact that the paper is brighter really makes it a different product.

Cheers.

[rainbarrel_recycler]

Our workplace didn't pay for recycling pickup initially, so I would take all the paper home and recyle it myself. I guess that enough people began doing this that eventually the company relented, and I'm proud to say that we now have recycling pickup at the workplace!