Greening your home office doesn’t mean that you have to spend a lot of money and go without the things you are comfortable with. However, greening your office can end up saving your home-based business money in the long run and help reduce its carbon footprint. For the most part, greening your office requires conscious choice and using reusable products over disposable products. Since so much time is spent at work it only makes sense to make your office as environmentally friendly as possible!
Replace the coffee.
A simple way to make the office a little greener is by replacing the current coffee with a fair-trade, shade-grown, or organic version. Fair-trade coffees are produced and purchased from farmers with livable wages for both themselves and their employees. Shade-grown coffee is grown in the rain forests under the canopy of trees which means no trees were cut down to grow the coffee beans. Organic coffee is grown without any pesticides and herbicides.
Replace the disposable paper cups.
Use your mug instead of using paper cups. According to National Geographic, “15 people replacing their three paper cups a day each with a washable, reusable mug would save 11,250 paper cups from being purchased and tossed.” That is a lot of paper cups that are being saved from going to the landfill.
Turn off the electronics.
Use the energy-saver settings on all electronics and turn them off when you leave for the day. Have computers set to go into sleep mode if untouched for 10 or 15 minutes. Use motion sensors or timers on overhead lighting to prevent lighting empty rooms. Power down printers, fax machines and computers at the end of the day to save electricity and lower the power bill.
Go paperless.
Try to cut back on your paper usage, it’s not completely impossible. Instead of printing out an email, save it. Send contracts via email and electronically sign them when possible.