Ideas for Creating a Green Workspace

The present-day business world is making big steps in the sustainable direction. Of course, this trend was not ushered by strictly altruistic motives even though we must agree that any effort in preserving the environment is necessary and worthwhile.

The main reason why the effort for making the business operations greener, leaner, and more optimized comes in the fact that all these initiatives have a very positive effect on their profitability and the ability to keep pace with the incredibly competitive corporate landscape. According to some estimates, the shift toward sustainability could save the global economy $26 trillion by 2030.

Your company can tap into these benefits as well.

Let us take a look then at some of the most effective strategies you can use to make your office greener and more sustainable and save your organization a lot of money along the way.

Take care of the cooling and heating

If we look at the latest workplace trends we will see that collaborative and open-office designs are picking up a lot of steam. Using these innovative office ideas, however, takes a lot of room and this requirement can cause very steep cooling and heating expenses. The first thing you can do about this issue is to equip the offices with a healthy dose of insulation that will reduce the need for energy expenditure in the months when temperatures take the biggest swings. As for the rest, the programmable and automated thermostats can go a long way in keeping the power usage in accordance with the current necessities.

Handle the energy consumption

Even though they don’t feel as cumbersome as industrial facilities, workplaces eat up a lot of energy. If we take Australia as an example of a developed country we will see that the average SMB office uses between 13,000 and 36,000-kilowatt hours on an annual basis. You need to do everything you can to bring these numbers down. Some of the easiest ways to do that include the mentions like:

• Lower the brightness settings on office monitors
• Unplug the devices when they are not in use
• Close the apps and programs that are not currently in use
• Share devices like printers between workers
• Move to the cloud to reduce paper and energy consumption
• Put the devices in sleep mode when they are not in immediate use

Green up the space

Green trends are aimed toward building more sustainable, healthier, and humane communities, and these goals can’t be achieved without literally going green. Fortunately, this issue is very easy to sort out. If we once again take Australia as an example, finding a good plant delivery in Sydney and other similar urban areas is fairly simple so do your best to check this box as soon as possible. Keeping in mind the inherent benefits of indoor plants, this move will unlock an entire slew of benefits ranging from improved indoor air quality to boosts to the mental well-being and the performance of your workers.

Regulate the lighting

In order to do that, you should first try to maximize the amount of natural light your employees have at their disposal so consider expanding the available window space. This will also serve as a great opportunity to replace the older units with the double-glazed variety and improve the overall insulation capacity of the premises. Second, do something to reduce the expenditure made by the artificial lighting fixtures. The combination of the latest-gen CFL or LED bulbs and motion-triggered controls that will keep the units on only when someone occupies the room makes a really good place to start, saving up to 70% of energy.

Invest in renewable energy

This may seem like a very big item in your company’s budget. But, first and foremost, keeping in mind the current state of the global economy, the transition to renewable energy is all but necessary. Second, all these investments do pay off in the long term. Finally, governments around the world are usually ready to offer SMBs grants and other incentives that should help the acquisition of necessary equipment far easier. So, even though solar panels and similar assets may seem out of your reach, you should consider jumping on this bandwagon and ensuring your company’s financial and energy independence.

Reduce the water consumption

Last but not least, let us quickly cover another important goal of the green movement and that would be the preservation of drinking water. You can start addressing this issue by installing low-flow water taps and water tanks that will do a great job of reducing the amount of water that needlessly goes down the drain. Also, you can start distributing drinking water in portions to make sure the employees are aware of how much water they are spending at any given moment. Finally, if you really want to go all in regarding this problem, you can invest in equipment for water collection, reclamation, and recycling.

We hope these couple of examples gave you a general idea about the strategies your company can use to make its offices greener and business processes more sustainable. Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg, and the strategies for making green initiatives are limited only by your imagination and will to fight. But, all these efforts will be made much easier if you know the general direction in which you should be going and now you have a perfect place to start.