Greener Office

Encouragement

DEVELOP AN INTERNAL GREEN TEAM

A Green Team will develop green initiatives and goals for the entire office community and encourage their implementation. They will also create a Green Policy for the entire office.

In the NRDC’s Green Your Office, NRDC senior resource specialist, Darby Hoover, says “Creating a green team with employees from all divisions of an organization is something a lot of workplaces have done very successfully,” Involving everyone, including support and maintenance staff, is key. “Often administrative staff are the ones who do a lot of printing and know how to reduce waste associated with the copier. The folks who clean things know what people are throwing away. They see what happens in the kitchen.” As a group, you can recommend changes, such as investing in EnergyStar office equipment, low-flow toilets, or sink faucet aerators. “These kinds of recommendations have more sway coming from a green team,” Hoover says. “Individuals might not have as much power.”

Involving senior management is essential to the success of any organization’s greening effort, but it is not sufficient to only include senior management in environmental decision-making. When attempting to enhance environmental performance, companies should involve employees at all levels of the organization. One of the best ways to promote the participation of employees is to form an eco-committee composed of interested staff. An eco-committee can be a valuable component of your organization’s effort to enhance its environmental performance. It can be a source for new ideas and motivation and can serve as a link between upper management and individual departments.

Since all operations engender some type of environmental impact, and since often the employees in different areas of the organization have the best ideas about how to make environmental improvements in those areas, eco-committees should be made up of staff from all departments at various levels. For example:

  • Involving facility operations staff is critical to ensure the maximum use of non-toxic cleaning products.
  • Involving production office employees is essential to ensure that procurement policies, office recycling, and paper reduction efforts are carried out.
  • The participation of upper management is necessary to ensure that sustainability is a priority throughout the organization.

An eco-committee should meet regularly to discuss progress, goals, and strategies. In addition, it should periodically provide updates to upper management.

IDEAS FOR INCREASING STAFF INVOLVEMENT

  • Distribute branded reusable coffee mugs, water bottles, or shopping bags along with a memo or brochure explaining your organization’s initiative
  • Offer a monthly raffle or prizes for participation in your organization’s eco-committee, or for offering suggestions on how to improve environmental performance
  • Provide clear and very visible signs at recycling, printing, and food stations to promote compliance with the theatre’s eco-practices
  • Offer incentives or rewards for using alternate transit methods like biking, public transit, or carpools
  • Organize eco-committee social events to build interest and reward members

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Transportation

If 25 percent of Americans today used mass transit or other alternatives to driving for their daily commute, annual transportation emissions nationwide would be slashed by up to 12 percent. Whenever possible, walk, bike, carpool, or use buses, trains, or light rail to get to work. Encourage the use of public transit through TransitChek or other programs. Where public transit is unavailable, encourage carpools by sending an email to staff members. See below for tips for encouraging bicycling, public transportation, and carpooling in your office community.

Tips to promote bicycling

  • Provide secure and conveniently located bicycle racks for people travelling to the venue.
  • Provide safe pedestrian walkways to the facility from nearby transit options.
  • Prominently display pedestrian and bike maps in staff rooms and feature information on your website.
  • Offer incentives for walking and biking to the venue.
  • Arrange discounts at local bicycling shops or bike sharing programs for ticket-holders.
  • Disseminate information concerning bike routes and bicycle-friendly public transportation connections to audience members and feature all environmentally preferable transit information on your website.
  • Encourage staff cycling groups and events to promote organization-wide biking.

Tips to Encourage Public Transit

  • Pay or discount cost of employee public transportation passes
  • Provide other incentives for employees who take public transportation
  • Provide information on your website and in publicity materials on public transit options, including park and ride sites.

Tips to Encourage Carpooling

  • Provide discounted and preferential parking for staff who carpool.
  • Actively match employees with those who live nearby.
  • Circulate tips for effective and enjoyable carpools on your internal website and in newsletters, and use to coordinate carpooling.
  • Offer other incentives for carpoolers.
  • Use your organization’s internal website and/or theatres bulletin boards to coordinate carpooling or recommend another existing carpooling website to help employees efficiently organize a regular carpool in their area.

If commuting by car is unavoidable, invest in a fuel-efficient vehicle. When purchasing company vehicles or using a car service, consider electrics or hybrids.

For more information on environmentally preferable vehicles, visit NRDC: Grasping Green Car Technology, the EPA’s Green Vehicle Guide, and Fueleconomy.gov.

Utilize video conferencing systems instead of traveling to a meeting. A single round-trip flight from Los Angeles to New York, for example, creates a warming effect equivalent to two to three tons of carbon emissions per person—the same load the average car produces over six months.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Energy Consumption

The federal government’s Energy Star program offers many technical resources to help your office reduce its energy use:

ENERGY STAR BUILDING MANUAL

APPLIANCES AND ELECTRONICS

Visit the federal government’s Energy Star products database for listings of the most energy-efficient products on the market, for a wide range of product categories. Also consider including Energy Star and energy efficiency specifications in contracts and requests for proposal. Contract language examples and additional product specifications can be found at the EPA’s Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Program.

The Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) can also help you specify cost-competitive, high-performance, and environmentally preferable computer desktops, laptops, and monitors.

For a list of energy efficiency incentives and rebates in your state, visit the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency.

Configure your devices to automatically enter low-power modes when idle, and remember that anything plugged in sucks energy, even when turned off. To nix this drain, plug devices into a power strip and flick the “off” switch when you’re done for the day. (You can keep your set-top boxes or game consoles plugged in to a wall outlet to avoid disconnecting them.) Mandate that all computers and printers be turned off at the end of the work day.

Get rid of your screen saver. It uses more energy than setting your screen to completely switch off after 15 minutes of inactivity.

HVAC

Evaluate your office’s HVAC systems and upgrade for greater efficiency if necessary.

When purchasing a new HVAC system, consider purchasing the most efficient model that suits your needs. Visit the US EPA’s Energy Star products database for a list of the most efficient HVAC systems. In addition, consult the Energy Star Building Manual for Heating and Cooling to learn more about HVAC efficiency upgrades. For those products that are not rated by Energy Star, consult the Federal Energy Management Program.

NRDC’s building uses plantings and light-colored roofing to reduce heat islands. Natural ventilation cools the building through transoms and operable windows in every office, and rooftop monitors use louvers and fans to draw warm air up and expel it outside. Many spaces, including our rooftop conference rooms, rely on such natural ventilation exclusively. In other areas, peak-load cooling is supplied by high efficiency air conditioning units that use outside air only and a non-ozone-depleting refrigerant. This cooled air is delivered through floor-level plinths that provide cool air only where it is needed—to occupants—rather than pushing cold air downward through hot, still, polluted air that accumulates at the top of a room. Such displacement ventilation systems improve air quality and save energy by leveraging natural forces.

Every individual office has a heating convector that turns off (as does air conditioning) if the nearest window is opened, thereby using energy only when needed. Each office also has its own thermostat so that occupants may control their own office temperature. In conventional buildings, all individual offices are wastefully heated or cooled to the same temperature, even if rooms are vacant or occupants have different preferences. All the air and water in our building is heated with natural gas. See NRDC’s Santa Monica Office for examples.

LIGHTS

In commercial buildings, more energy is used for lighting than for anything else. NRDC’s buildings are strategically designed to dramatically reduce artificial lighting demand. Sunlight reaches every story through three light wells, extending from ground floor to roof, and through windows on both sides of the building. Daylight sensors dim hallway lights when sufficient daylight is present, and occupancy sensors turn office lights off when rooms become vacant. The office fixtures, suspended from the ceiling, project light up and down, allowing 90 percent of the light to be utilized (which is about 50 percent better than typical systems) with reduced glare. All offices and conference rooms have interior windows facing the hallways. Translucent glass, used for the terrace restroom windows and terrace skylight, and clerestories afford privacy while diffusing natural light throughout the building. Learn about the NRDC’s Santa Monica Office here.

Reduce Energy Consumption from Lighting

  • Turning off lights in unoccupied public spaces like bathrooms, kitchens, and conference rooms not only conserves energy but can start (or reinforce) a good habit in coworkers.
  • Hang signs reminding people to turn off lights as they leave the room
  • Switch to Low-Mercury Fluorescent Light Bulbs. Standard fluorescent bulbs, considered hazardous waste by the U.S. EPA after their use, contain three times as much mercury. Combined with energy-efficient lighting design, the bulbs reduce the building’s average annual mercury waste by 600 milligrams, compared to that of a standard project.
  • Use Office Ceiling Lights. These suspended fixtures project light up and down, allowing 90 percent of the light to be utilized (which is about 50 percent better than typical systems) with reduced glare.
  • Install Occupancy and Daylight Sensors.
  • If you have your own office, consider using a desk lamp with an energy-saving LED bulb and forgoing the overheads.

RENOVATIONS

  • Consider consulting green architects, designers and construction companies for any renovations.
  • Inquire with your energy provider about buying into an energy portfolio consisting of energy from renewable sources such as wind, solar and hydro.
  • Consider investing in high quality alternative energy carbon offsets.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Reusables

There are about 269,000 tons of plastic pollution wreaking havoc on our oceans, and a big chunk of it comes from the disposable forks and spoons, sandwich wrappers, and other single-use food and beverage packaging we toss out. Indeed, less than 15 percent of plastic packaging in the United States gets recycled.

Employees should eliminate waste by bringing lunch from home in reusable containers (skip the plastic wrap and aluminum foil) and by keeping a set of cutlery, a couple of dishes, a mug, and a cloth napkin at your desk (if your office doesn’t supply any). Use them when you grab a bite out or have food delivered, and tell the vendor to hold the disposables.

Employers should stock the kitchen areas with reusable mugs, plates, bowls and utensils to discourage the use of paper and plastic disposables. Consider cloth napkins or use paper napkins or towels with high post consumer recycled content.

Employers should give employees a mug or reusable water bottles with the company logo for their first day, a holiday or any occasion, to encourage eliminating plastic waste. Consider providing labels to help staff identify their items. Discourage staff from purchasing or requesting single-serving bottles of water whenever possible. Also, provide water fountains or filtered tap water stations for employees to fill up reusables.

For information on water filters, visit the website of the National Sanitation Foundation International, which provides listings of NSF Certified Drinking Water Treatment Units.

Employers should also encourage staff to use reusable bags and napkins for their lunches.

Paper

The average office generates about 350 pounds of waste paper per employee every year.

PRINTING

Follow the following steps to reduce how much your office prints.

  • Skip the handouts and view meeting materials on a monitor at the conference table instead.
  • Mandate double-sided printing. As printers and copiers need to be replaced, purchase units that can print on both sides of a sheet of paper. Then set all computers and copiers to default to double-sided printing. Or, print on the back of previously printed paper.
  • When printing is a must, fit more text per page by reducing margin sizes and type sizes.
  • To cut down on ink, print in black and white and in draft mode, adjustments you can make through your computer’s print settings. And make sure your office recycles printer cartridges. An estimated 375 million (at least half of the cartridges purchased each year) are either incinerated or tossed in landfills, where their slow-to-decompose plastics might linger in the environment for a millennium. You can also drop off your old ink cartridges at Broadway Green Alliance’s Office through the Collections Program.
  • E-mail invoices and contracts (which can be e-signed).
  • Edit and comment on drafts electronically.
  • Don’t print e-mails. Put the words “save a tree, don’t print me” at the bottom of all emails.
  • Print less: keep mailing lists current, and don’t overprint copies or outside print jobs.
  • Investigate a paperless direct deposit system for your employees.

PAPER PURCHASING

Push your office to buy paper that is made with 100 percent post-consumer recycled content rather than produced with virgin materials, which generate twice as much greenhouse gas emissions. It’ll save energy, water, and wood and reduce water and air pollution.

RECYCLE

Encourage your coworkers to recycle paper trash to keep it out of landfills, where it decomposes to produce methane, a powerful global warming pollutant. See the Recycling section below for more information. See WasteWise – How to Start or Expand a Recycling Program or visit Earth 911 and the Environmental Yellow Pages for a list recycling service providers.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

WASTE

For a useful discussion of waste reduction, see the EPA’s Reduce, Reuse, Recycle webpages, and see the EPA’s Resource Conservation section on reduction and reuse.

The best way to cut down your waste stream and minimize waste costs is to reduce the amount of materials you need to discard. Minimize waste generation by avoiding unnecessary packaging and paper use, reducing the amount of disposable products your office uses, and reusing materials.

RECYCLING

Make sure recycling containers are clearly labeled and recycling procedures are explained to all employees. Work with employees to learn about what items are recycled in the building and how they should be sorted. Explain mandatory recycling policies to the entire office and clearly mark recycling bins with pictures of the items they accept, make sure they are in convenient locations, and point them out during initial office tours.

Consider using NRDC’s Paper Recycling Signage (PDF) as a model for your paper recycling signs.

If your office doesn’t have a recycling program, work with your office manager and custodial staff to set one up for paper, aluminum cans, and plastic bottles and containers (check the local government website to find out what is accepted for recycling in your community). Push for composting, too. If your office does offer one or both, encourage colleagues to participate by hanging signs that clearly delineate what to recycle and compost, and ensure that bins are placed in convenient areas.

Arrange for a company to pick up your paper, metal and plastic recycling. Consider joining the EPA’s free WasteWise program, which provides members with several benefits, including a technical assistance team that will help you conduct a waste audit, reduce waste, and implement a recycling program.

For listings of recycling service providers, visit Earth 911 and the Environmental Yellow Pages.

Calculate the environmental benefits of recycling.

For a comprehensive discussion on waste recycling, reuse, and reduction, see EPA’s Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle pages.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

FOOD WASTE

Instead of throwing away unused food, consider donating it to a nearby food bank or homeless shelter. Contact your local food banks, or visit Feeding America for information about food banks near you.

COMPOSTING

Composting reduces the environmental impacts associated with waste disposal, and if done properly, it can even save your organization money through reduced waste, hauling, disposal, and fertilizer costs. There are many opportunities to reduce waste by initiating composting programs at a theatre ranging from collection of grass clippings and other landscaping wastes, to collecting kitchen scraps, audience food waste, and compostable serviceware.

Composting is the controlled breakdown of organic waste (generally landscaping waste and certain types of food) into a useful product that can be used as a mulch and fertilizer. It is easy and cost-effective, and since it can reduce the volume of your theatre’s waste stream and reduce your need to buy mulch and fertilizer, composting can even save money. You can consider whether it’s possible to set up a composting program on-site, or work with your waste hauler or other local haulers to collect organic waste for offsite composting.

For more information about composting in New York City, visit NYC Wasteless: Composting in NYC.

For listings of compost service providers near your city, visit Biocycle’s Find A Composter and Earth 911’s Business Resources directory. Also visit the EPA’s Compost website for more information on composting.

Purchasing

In an effort to enhance their environmental performance, many companies have instituted purchasing policies that give preference to environmentally intelligent products. Consider implementing your own environmentally preferable purchasing policy based on the sample policy below. Work with your employees and suppliers to source and promote greener materials.

Where possible, purchase products that have been certified by Green Seal or Green Guard. The EPA’s Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Database is also an excellent source for product specifications, contract language, and lists of preferable products.

When possible, purchasing decisions should favor:

  • Products produced locally or regionally
  • Products that contain the highest percentage of post consumer recycled content possible
  • Products that are reusable, recyclable, or compostable
  • Products that eliminate or reduce the use of chemicals hazardous to the environment and public health
  • Products that reduce air and water pollution
  • Products with minimal packaging
  • Suppliers that provide environmentally preferable products and can document the supply-chain impacts of their efforts
  • Products that serve several functions (e.g. multipurpose cleaner) and reduce the overall number of products purchased

When you can’t buy office supplies and equipment locally, buy in bulk to reduce shipping pollution and packaging waste.

Reuse shipping boxes whenever possible.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Safer Products and Chemicals

CLEANING PRODUCTS Many common cleaning and maintenance products contain chemicals that are potentially harmful to human health and the environment. Consider consulting with your office’s suppliers about less toxic alternatives to the cleaning products you currently buy. You may also wish to incorporate specifications for less toxic products in contracts and requests for proposals. Also consider reusable cleaning cloths and dilution centers, which cut down on waste and save money.. For listings of green cleaning contractors, visit Green America’s National Green Pages.

Cleaning and maintenance products can contain a wide variety of compounds that can adversely impact the health of employees. Use the following resources to find out which cleaning products are right for your office.

INDOOR AIR POLLUTANTS

Certain products and equipment can release into the air harmful chemicals including volatile organic compounds that can have an adverse impact on the health of people in your facility. Indoor air quality is sometimes much worse than outdoor air quality and indoor pollutants have many different sources, including paints, printer cartridges, adhesives, HVAC systems, portable generators, chairs and carpets, and other types of office equipment.

The sources of indoor air pollutants are diverse, and so are the solutions. Consider starting with the following suggestions, and consult the EPA’s Building Air Quality Guide for Facility Managers for more information about the reduction of indoor pollution.

  • Keep MSDS (material safety and data) sheets on all chemicals used in all of your shop, and make sure all staff members know where they are located.
  • When furnishing, look for products that are certified by the MPI Green Performance Standard, Green Seal, and Green Guard.
  • Favor non-toxic, water-based products instead of solvent-based products when choosing paints, varnishes, inks, thinners, aerosol spray products, leather and textile dyes, permanent marking pens, glues and adhesives.
  • Clean steel with non-solvent based cleaners, like citrus-based products.
  • Use powder coatings, which have low- or no-VOC content.
  • Monitor for common indoor air pollutants such as radon and carbon monoxide.
  • Centralize printing and copying, which can reduce toner use and save money.
  • Purchase products with low emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
  • Favor non-toxic cleaning and maintenance products.
  • Limit use of indoor pesticides and investigate less toxic pest control methods.

Avoid products with the following ingredients:

  • Formaldehyde
  • Polyvinyl chloride (PVC)
  • Phthalate plasticizers (often referred to as “fragrances” on product labels)
  • Brominated flame retardants (when possible)
  • Chromium
  • Chromate copper arsenate