Episode 10 - Green at Work
Welcome to 1000 Ways Green! The show where we are going to give busy people like you easy ways to help save the planet for our future generations, and try to save you money along the way.
Hey hey! If you’ve listened from the beginning, thank you so much! And we’ve made it into the double digits episodes! This week we’ll be talking about ways to make your workplace greener.
Mint Green level: Your mint green challenge this week is to stop printing so much at work and ideally at home too. If you do need to print try to use smaller font sizes and print double sided. Instead of printing, use online sharing tools such as Google drive, Microsoft OneDrive/SharePoint, Dropbox or similar tools. Besides not wasting paper they will also allow for better real time updates and collaboration.
Shamrock Green level: For your shamrock green level challenge this week we're going to dig into online storage a bit more. Did you know that every file and email you save online requires energy to go into a server to maintain it? Your challenge this week is to look at the biggest files you have saved online and see which of them you can delete to save energy each and every day. Also let your coworkers know this so your entire building can save energy and help save the planet!
Forest green level: As we look into your forest green level I want to take a second to talk about systems change. While each change we make is good and helpful, the most powerful changes we can make for the planet are when we alter systems because they automatically affect multiple people and make the default better for the planet. So the system change we're going to look at now is around your work's plan for public transit and carpooling. Your challenge this week is to talk to the person who controls or sets up your mass transit benefits. For most of you this is likely your human resources person. Ask them what it would take to increase the benefit or money going towards these programs. Ideally the goal here is to make it so that taking public transport or carpooling is so much cheaper than driving by yourself that almost everyone will choose it going forward.
If your workplace doesn’t have a benefit like this, ask if it would be possible to have as a part of next year’s benefits when they come out and what it would take to make that happen. The only link for you this week is an article talking about the basic benefits to both employees and your company by doing these things that you can find in the show notes.
Until next time, Be Green and Be Seen.
Links from the show: