With our motto being 'why replace when you can repair?' and all of us being quite environmentally conscious at home, one of our main aims for this year was to see what we could do to become a bit more environmentally friendly at Gazebo Spare Parts. Here's what we've come up with so far:
1. Electricity
- We turn off all office equipment (laptops, printers etc) that don't need to be on overnight. Select the most energy-efficient settings for monitors (e.g. making laptop sleep after 15 minutes without use etc).
- We use LED bulbs where possible and try to take advantage of natural light.
- We turn lights off in rooms that aren't being used e.g. kitchens/bathrooms.
2. Reduce Reuse Recycle (Refuse)
- Reduce paper usage - emailing documents and using digital copies.
- Reuse hand towels/tea towels that can be washed rather than single-use paper towels.
- Recycle - we have recycle bins in the office, warehouse and kitchenette.
- Refuse - We don't have a water cooler/coffee machine, but we do drink a lot of tea and use mugs/glasses rather than disposable cups.
- We are changing to recycled paper for our printer/office use.
3. Printer Settings
- We print our invoices using the draft printing mode and we don't print in colour (which generally uses more ink). We will be trialling not printing invoices at all later this year and emailing them instead.
- We recycle our ink cartridges.
- We save paper by only printing when necessary and printing on both sides of the paper.
4. Packaging
Over the next couple of years, we are looking to make all of our packaging recyclable. At the moment, we use:
- Cardboard boxes for our canopies.
- Biodegradable bubblewrap on items that may sustain damage in transit e.g. poles (only where necessary).
And in the future we are looking at:
- Using cardboard boxes rather than our current plastic tubing for our poles, which would also have the added bonus of preventing the need to use bubble wrap.
- Cardboard envelopes rather than jiffy bags for our smaller parts.
5. Other Ideas
- Green cleaning products - we use eco-friendly cleaning products in our kitchenette and bathroom.
- Go green - literally - we have plants in our office which recycle air and have the added bonus of making the office look nice.
Summary
Being an office of just three people, we have found it quite easy to make a few changes. I can imagine in a busy, larger office it may be more difficult; especially with colleagues that don't think it's important or limited resources/funds to implement new systems etc. Small changes do add up to make a big difference though, so consider adding a recycling bin in the kitchen to make it easy for people to recycle, or stop providing single-use items such as plastic cups and encourage people to bring their own reusable bottles/mugs.
Do you try and run an environmentally conscious office/home? Get in touch and give us your suggestions on what we could do to make our office better and let us know what you do to make your office/home more 'green'.
