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|  At Home | At Work | In The Backyard | In The Classroom | In Your Community | Outdoors | Home Owners | Commuters | Businesses | Investors | Politicians & City Planners What You Can Do: In The Office
Artificial lighting consumes some 40 percent of electricity in a typical office building, and close to one-fourth of all electricity generation in the U.S. Lighting consumes the equivalent of nearly half of all coal burned in the U.S., or the equivalent of all the hydroelectric power in the country. Over the past two decades there has been a veritable technological revolution in lighting, resulting in ways to deliver high-quality light with 50 to 90 percent less energy consumption. When fully adopted worldwide, these improvements will displace the need for tens of thousands of power plants. But it still all begins with each person being aware of when artificial light is needed or not needed. If you have blinds, leave them open and let the daylight in. Blinds are an integral component of improving a building’s environmental performance through a natural lighting design strategy. They are highly useful for reflecting harsh light towards the ceiling, especially the (unwanted) glare of morning sunlight and intense afternoon sun. This fine-tuning is far preferable to entirely closing the blinds, which then requires turning on artificial lights (and air-conditioning to remove the unwanted heat caused by artificial lighting) that may not otherwise be necessary with the available daylight. Back to Top 2. Turn off your office lights when leaving for 30 minutes or more. It is a mistaken belief that turning off lights prematurely burns out the lamp. This may have been the case 20 years ago, but not with today's high-efficiency lamps and solid-state electronic ballasts. It especially makes no sense to leave on lights if you're going to be out of the room for 30 minutes or more. You may think, what's the big deal? But recognize that if 10 million office workers each turned off unnecessary lights 30 minutes a day this would eliminate the need for a 50 megawatt (MW) hydro-electric or coal plant. The savings would efficiently light 50 million square feet of office space. Back to Top 3. In meeting rooms, turn on either ceiling lamps or fluorescent fixtures, but not both, in order to avoid excessive lighting levels that cause glare, eye strain, and fatigue. Architects are notorious for over-specifying lighting levels. Swedish lighting experts found current recommended lighting levels vary 20-fold for various office building activities across 19 countries. Almost without exception, there was a steady increase in levels from the 1930s to the early 1970s. They have been declining since, although they still remain high. A fundamental thing to remember about light levels is that higher amounts (illumination is measured in units called lux, or footcandles) does not equate into better seeing. The human eye perceives things through contrast not light levels per se. So flooding the room with excess lux only leads to glare, discomfort and fatigue for many people. Be experimental and try different lighting arrangements, turning on some but not all fixtures. Don't simply turn on all the lights and assume this is the best situation. Just because the architect provided extra lights doesn't mean they all must be turned on. Do recognize that initially your eyes will perceive the room darker when you turn off some lights, but they will adjust within a few minutes and the room will appear to have a normal or acceptable level of lighting.Back to Top 4. Turn off lights in meeting and conference rooms when not being used (either by yourself or by others who forgot to turn off lights). Considerable electricity is wasted each day as a result of leaving on the lights in unoccupied meeting and conference rooms. In a building with a dozen meeting rooms, each with 500 watts or more of lighting fixtures, saving one hour of wasted lighting each day results annually in eliminating the need for 1500 kWh of electricity and preventing the release of nearly three tons of CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. Or have the owners of the building install occupancy sensors that automatically turn off lights five to 10 minutes after the room is emptied, and automatically turn on the lights whenever a person enters the room.Back to Top5. If needed, consider using an Energy Star Labeled desk lamp or floor lamp and turn off some or all of the ceiling lights in your office. Some employees dislike the feel of overhead lighting, potentially due to the lighting being too intense, or too bright. Not surprisingly, people sometimes switch to task lamps on their desks, while turning off the overhead fixtures, which can reduce glare and eye strain, and provide better focused lighting. Others use floor lamps that illuminate the ceiling, but less intensely than ceiling fixtures. While task and floor lamps are excellent options, some desk and floor lamps are seriously inefficient. The worst option, by far, is the halogen torchiere, a freestanding floor lamp with a shallow bowl-shaped light fixture mounted on top of a 6-foot pole and illuminated by a tubular halogen bulb requiring a monstrous 250 to 500 Watts. This extremely inefficient lamp is also a major fire hazard and burn risk due to the very high temperature of the halogen bulb. The multi-hundred Watt bulb consumes four or more times electricity to provide the same lighting as a high-efficiency compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) torchiere, and ten times more Watts than a CFL desk task lamp. Back to Top6. If your company has a paper recycling system, recycle your discarded paper. More than half of all paper in the United States is not recycled - about 35 million tons per year. Most employees are simply not thinking when they toss paper into the trashcan. A good amount of this paper might be recyclable - not disposable - as a wide range of paper materials can now be recycled. For example, all the following papers can be recycled with the proper facilities: Computer, copier, printer paper, all white and colored papers, fax paper, adding machine tapes, tab and time cards, accounting ledgers, posters and bulletins, NCR carbonless forms, Post-It notes, magazines, mail order catalogs, newspapers, all types of envelopes including ones with windows, labels, coated and colored, all mail pamphlets and brochures, unwaxed cardboard, and manila or colored folders, and even the slip-off sleeves on paper coffee cups. Tapping into this "urban forest" of discarded paper can greatly diminish Americans' ecological footprint. In the manufacturing process of recycled paper compared to virgin paper production, not only is less virgin forest destroyed and land converted, but:
In 1999, U.S. residents, businesses, and institutions produced more than 230 million tons of municipal solid waste, which is approximately 4.6 pounds of waste per person per day, up from 2.7 pounds per person per day in 1960. Luckily, some leadership institutions, cities, and corporations have begun to make zero waste commitments in an effort to lessen the waste load. Even after paper recycling, much more of the trash stream can be reduced or even prevented (what some wits term "pre-cycling"). Five examples:
Most offices receive a significant amount of unwanted mail that is immediately discarded (hopefully recycled). Some of this mail is addressed to former employees, some is unsolicited mail order catalogs, some are duplicate copies of magazines and journals, and some consist of a steady stream of unwanted solicitations. Employees, no doubt, have parallel junk mail experiences at home, given the fact that U.S. catalog circulation topped 17 billion in 1998, or about 64 catalogs per person. The environmental impacts of making, using, and disposing of this 4 million tons of annual catalog paper are substantial - 40% of which never gets opened - including, according to one source:
Each person makes personal decisions on what they eat and drink. Choose environmentally lower-impact beverages by taking advantage of filtered, low-cost drinking water. Encourage your company to install water filters in all office kitchen and pantry faucets, and on the water inlets for the ice machines in the refrigerators.What does it mean to choose more fresh water and less canned or bottled liquids to drink? Well, the U.S. goes through several hundred billion liquid containers a year. The average American consumes more than 400 beverage bottles and cans per year, leaving a legacy of wasted glass, plastic, steel and aluminum. Quenching this thirst consumes a prodigious amount of fossil fuels and hydropower for mining, processing, refining, shaping, shipping, storing, refrigerating and disposing these materials, as well as encroaching more natural lands to extract more minerals and natural resources.It reportedly takes 10 gallons of water to produce each cola drink. Instead, do as health experts advise and drink 1/2 ounce of water for each point of your body weight (i.e., a 150 pound person should drink 75 ounces or about nine 8-oz. glasses daily). Back to Top10. If an office recycling program exists, recycle aluminum cans, glass and plastic bottles. Also wash plastic plates, spoons, forks and knives used in luncheons and receptions, and store for future reuse. Clearly most people desire a variety of liquid refreshments, even if they do decide to drink more filtered faucet water. Hence, when beverages in recyclable containers are purchased you should routinely recycle this "urban mine" of resources. In 1999, Americans spent over $58 billion to buy 14 billion gallons of carbonated soft drinks (27% of total drinks). 65 billion soft drinks were packaged in cans, 24 billion were packaged in PET plastic bottles, and 850 million were packaged in glass bottles.ALUMINUM CANS: Producing a ton of aluminum from scratch requires 16,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, while using recycled cans requires only 750 kWh. Producing one ton of aluminum from virgin materials requires: 4 tons of bauxite, half ton of petroleum coke, half ton of soda ash, 1/7th ton of pitch, 1/10th ton of lime, and 200 million BTUs of energy (equivalent to 33 barrels of oil). Pollutants generated include: 1.5 tons of red mud, 80 pounds of air pollutants, and 80 pounds of solid wastes. The good news is that the national recycling rate in 1998 for aluminum beverage cans was 55 percent, or 56 billion cans (plus another 7.9 billion cans imported from foreign countries). Recycling aluminum saves 95+% of the energy, air and water pollution created by virgin aluminum production. PLASTIC CONTAINERS: There are many grades of plastic, coded by number and imprinted on the bottom of the container. Number 1, PET (polyethylene terephthalate), and No. 2, HDPE (High-Density Polyethylene), from which most beverage bottles are made, are the most recycled in the United States (although they represent less than a 25% of total plastic waste). Some good news about plastic is that the amount of post-consumer PET bottles collected in the U.S. increased to 771 million pounds in 1999, or one-quarter of PET bottles, and more bottles are being produced per pound of raw material. Since 1978, manufacturers have reduced the weight of a two-liter PET bottle by 27%, and two 1-gallon milk jugs are now made from the same amount of HDPE that only produced one jug in 1960. STEEL CANS: 32 billion steel cans were used in 2000, or about 130 per person per year. Luckily U.S. steel can recycling rates have increased from 15 percent in 1988 to 58 percent in 2000, resulting in a diversion of 1.5 million tons of steel from landfills. The industry remelted more than 18 billion steel cans into new products, and more than 28 percent of a new steel can is now made from recycled steel. The bad news is that 1.4 million tons still get dumped in landfills because some 14 billion cans still go unrecycled. Given each ton of recycled steel saves one ton of ore, half a ton of coal, and 40 lbs. of limestone, complete recycling could annually reduce the need for mining 1.4 million tons of ore and 26,000 tons of lime, and burning 700,000 tons of coal. GLASS CONTAINERS: The recovery rate for glass containers in the U.S. has shown minimal growth over the past half decade, hovering around 30 percent. By comparison, seven European countries recycle twice this level, with Switzerland recycling an incredible 89% of their glass. A ton of glass produced from raw materials creates ~0.4 tons of mining waste. Using 50% recycled glass cuts this waste by three-fourths. PLASTIC WARE: Many offices regularly have food catered for working lunches, receptions, and other events. As a result, over the course of a year a considerable amount of plastic ware -- serving platters, plates, forks, spoons and knives -- is thrown out as trash after just one use at these events. When these plastics are coded No. 1 or 2 they can be recycled along with plastic bottles. However, most of this plastic ware is higher codes, which are not currently recycled. So, please take a moment to gather the re-usable plastic ware so it can be washed, dried, and stored for re-use by staff for routine lunches and meals. Back to Top 11. Reduce printing and photocopying by saving documents on your computer hard drive, and emailing articles to colleagues. By habit and custom, many office workers tend to print out any and everything (including routinely printing out their emails), rather than storing and reading many of these documents in electronic format. But, electronic storage facilitates more rapid sharing of documents with many more colleagues worldwide at a fraction of the cost of printing and mailing the documents. It is true that documents are harder to read on computer screens than in print, although screen resolution constantly improves and within the next half decade or so electronic screens should be available that offer similar visual quality to paper. That doesn’t help now, although you can increase the size of the font on your computer screen to make it easier to read, even on laptop screens. Back to Top 12. Print and photocopy double-sided (duplex) copies as the norm, and minimize single-sided printing and photocopying to absolute necessities. It takes 10 times more energy to manufacture paper as it does to print and/or photocopy images on to paper. Hence, duplexing greatly reduces the carbon (greenhouse gas emissions) and ecological footprint relative to one-sided printing/copying. In addition, when combined with copying two pages per side, the amount of paper used in photocopiers can be reduced by up to 75 percent. Such duplexing also reduces the weight and cost of mailing documents, as well as substantially shrinking the cabinet and floor space required to archive and store documents in bookcases and filing cabinets. Back to Top 13. Encourage your office to purchase 100% post-consumer waste, non-chlorinated paper stock. To lessen your impact on the environment use 100 percent post-consumer waste non-chlorinated paper. Although the cost may be a little higher than bleached virgin paper, the cost to the environment is significantly lower.Forty percent of all solid waste is generated from a variety of paper products. Office paper comprises a quarter of that waste, and currently less than twenty percent of office wastepaper in the U.S. is recovered for recycling. Although recycled paper is more expensive, it will not gain purchasing strength until the demand for it increases. Especially the demand for products made from materials that would otherwise be discarded ("post-consumer content"). Post-consumer content refers to products having completed their lives as consumer items and if not recycled, would otherwise be disposed of as solid waste. 100 percent post-consumer waste paper stock is made completely from recycled products. When buying, remember, the higher the percentage of post consumer waste, the larger the amount of recycled material in the paper stock.The majority of the paper used today is chlorinated or bleached to a bright white before it is used in offices. The process for bleaching paper creates a pollution by-product; but many companies now provide different forms of non-chlorinated paper to avoid this. There is totally chlorine-free paper stock (TCF), virgin paper produced without chlorine or any of its derivatives; processed chlorine-free paper (PCF) that contains recycled content produced without chlorine or its derivatives but some of the fibers may have originally been bleached; partially processed chlorine-free paper stock (%PCF), with the listed percentage made from recycled content and produced without chlorine with the virgin portion remaining bleached; and elementally chlorine-free paper stock (ECF), virgin paper produced without chlorine but with chlorine derivatives. Non-chlorinated paper is more natural in color, but is of the same high quality as the bleached variety.Back to Top14. Use black-and-white Econo-mode computer printing settings for all draft copies, and avoid color printing unless absolutely necessary. Additional energy savings and toner savings can be achieved by setting your printer default setting for eco-mode (typically the lowest DPI setting) for all printing of internal and draft copies. The life of the toner cartridge depends on the amount of toner that print jobs require. When printing text at five percent coverage an HP toner cartridge lasts an average of 15,000 pages. (A typical business letter is about 5% coverage). Econo-mode can use 50% less toner, enabling twice as many pages to be printed.Back to Top15. Press the EnergySaver (or PowerSaver) button after photocopying, and check to see if the photocopier is turned off at the end of the day. By pressing the EnergySaver button after photocopying you can significantly reduce the electric wattage consumed by photocopies normally left in the print mode. Checking at the end of the day to ensure it has been turned off will generate even larger electricity savings overnight and on weekends. Post signs above the copiers to remind staff, and if you walk by and hear the hum of a copier, that indicates it is in print mode, so hit the EnergySaver button.Back to Top 16. In fax machines, use the other side of already-used, single-sided paper that was going to be discarded. Many employees dispose of printer/copier paper that is clean on the backside and could easily be reused in fax machines or for printing draft copies of material. Other institutions like the World Resources Institute have implemented programs that recycle one-sided paper and dedicate certain fax and printer machines to just use this used paper. As a result, WRI paper consumption has declined by tens of percent.Back to Top 17. Set your computer's power management option settings so that the monitor automatically powers down at a predetermined interval, and shut down your computer, printer, and peripherals when leaving the office for two hours or more (and certainly overnight, weekends, and during travel trips). Just as with turning off office lights in unoccupied rooms, shut down your computer, monitor, and peripherals when you are not going to be using them for several hours or more. Turning them off at the end of the day and on weekends accrues substantial savings.Some staff dislike the time it takes to restart computers and prefer leaving their computers on all day. But these power saving features can be set to begin within a specified range of minutes after typing or copying stops. Unfortunately, research indicates that only half of all Energy Star computers have the power-saving features enabled. Screensavers, by the way, are not in sleep mode but actively consuming electricity. Getting everyone to turn off computers overnight and on weekends would reduce energy use nationwide by an extra 7 billion kWh/year, equal to three 500 MW coal power plants.Back to Top 18. If you use a laptop computer, increase the size of the font for easy reading, and eliminate the need for a large monitor. Many employees are increasingly shifting from desktop to notebook computers, largely because of the portability value the notebook offers for work travel, as well as for taking home to work. There is a price premium for this portability – notebooks still cost up to twice as much as a comparable desktop model, although prices steadily drop. However, in addition to the electricity savings the notebook gains over years of operation, there is the opportunity to save $200 to $500 or more by eliminating the purchase of a separate monitor.Back to Top 19. Reduce phantom electricity use by using a power strip to plug in all your computer equipment, and turn the power strip off overnight and weekends. Each appliance leaks anywhere from less than one to more than 20 watts continuously, (a typical house draws about 50 watts from leaking appliances) -- all while the appliances are turned off! Nationwide, leaking electricity from all devices requires the operation of eight large power plants that emit roughly 12 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Amazingly, about 3 billion kWh per year (two large coal-fired powerplants), which is 4% of all the office equipment energy use, is consumed in off mode -- electricity being consumed to keep the machine in ready mode for rapid start-up! Plugging the office equipment into a power strip, which is then switched off at night and on in the morning, can save this "off mode" electricity. There is quite a range of quality among power strips, from unsafe to high-performance. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is warning consumers about millions of faulty extension cords, power strips and surge protectors that pose a fire, shock and electrocution danger. So be cautious when purchasing a power strip in order to ensure proper and safe selection.Back to Top 20. Recycle all batteries. There are numerous types of batteries, depletable and rechargeable, including small dry-cell Zinc-Manganese-Dioxide (Alkaline), Nickel-Cadmium (Ni-Cd), Nickel Metal Hydride (Ni-MH), Lithium Ion (Li-ion), Silver Oxide and Mercury Oxide (specialty buttons), and Small Sealed Lead Acid (Pb) batteries. Toxic metals found in batteries include mercury, cadmium, lead, zinc, manganese, lithium, silver, and nickel. When disposed of improperly, these metals can pose risks for human health and the environment; for example, when toxic metals end up in the landfill they can leach into the groundwater.Battery use has become ubiquitous, and continues growing with the creation of new electronic equipment (e.g., cell phones, cameras, camcorders, palm pilots, walkmans, clocks, laptops, calculators). So ask your company's administration department to set up a battery recycling collection box in a convenient office location where staff can drop off dead batteries, including those brought in from home.Even prior to recycling, you can minimize the need for replacement batteries by:
To find out where to purchase environmentally preferable options for supplies and equipment check out the following links:Buy Recycled, Comprehensive Procurement Guide, U.S. EPA http://www.epa.gov/cpg/ Environmental Procurement, Pacific NW Pollution Prevention Resource Center http://www.pprc.org/pprc/pubs/topics/envpurch.html Buy Recycled Training Institute http://www.usmayors.org/USCM/uscm_projects_services/buy_recycled/brti_best_practices.htm Back to Top22. Try walking between office floors instead of using the elevator. Although it is not always practical, whenever possible consider walking between floors to help save electricity. Elevators use electricity. Although there are some super energy efficient elevators now commercially available, many buildings, particularly older ones, do not have them. Take a minute and walk between office floors.Back to Top23. Use a combination of walking, biking, and transit-commuting to and from work instead of driving. Commuting roundtrip from home to work (and side trips to stores, daycare centers, recreation spots, etc.) has become the single largest part of most U.S. households' ecological footprint. Americans have steadily increased the amount of passenger miles spent in the car (for all purposes) -- increasing from 3,000 miles per capita per year fifty years ago to more than 10,000 miles per capita in 2000. Americans collectively exceed 2 trillion vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per year, consume more than 100 billion gallons of gasoline, and spew out a large fraction of the world's chemical soup of contaminants that include billions of tons of greenhouse gases, million of tons of carbon monoxide, millions of tons of particulates, and millions of tons of nitrogen oxides.Consider always, or occasionally, using mass-transit options if you live in a city or metropolitan suburb. If mass transit is not available, investigate options for car-pooling on a regular basis -- even just sharing rides a few times a week saves fuel and makes the ride to and from work more enjoyable. From a fuel-efficiency perspective, bicycling is unrivaled. A bicyclist gets 2,500 miles per gallon based on the extra kilocalories of food required for pedaling.For hard-core motorists, consider a higher, super-high, or hyper-efficient vehicle in your next purchase. For example, in 2001, ten vehicle models achieved EPA's top 5-star Green Car rating. They are certain versions of the Honda Insight, Honda Civic HX, Toyota Prius, Honda Civic, Mazda 626, Honda Accord, Saturn L100/200, Toyota Camry, Pontiac Aztek, and the Mercedes-Benz ML320.Back to Top 24. Get involved in identifying options and opportunities for greening and shrinking your organization’s ecological footprint. There are many options and opportunities for greening and shrinking your company’s ecological footprint. Set up a cross-departmental committee to assess areas where individual and company practices can be improved to produce more eco-friendly results. Then come up with a list of suggestions, and work with company administrative staff and leadership to implement the ideas.To find out more about the ecological footprint concept visit the following websites: Ecological Footprint Analysis: Towards a Sustainability Indicator for Business, Research Association of Chartered Certified Accountants http://www.accaglobal.com/research/publications/summaries/23915 Steps Towards an Ecologically Sustainable University, Penn State (promoted by tropical ecologist Professor Christopher Uhl) http://www.bio.psu.edu/greendestiny/steps.shtmlBack to Top | ||||||||||||||||||
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