Top tips

Even if you are not planning an office move or refurbishment, there are many positive steps you can take immediately to reduce the footprint of your office, at little or no extra cost.

On this page we have listed simple tips for a greener office:

Keep clean bright and non-toxic
Keeping windows, walls and all surfaces clean and bright helps daylight penetrate into the room, reducing the need for artificial lighting. Similarly, keeping light fittings clean gives a brighter light for the money spent on electricity. Improve indoor air quality by using environmentally friendly cleaning products that have no toxic chemicals or perfumes. Avoid chemical air fresheners.

Locating the printer away from desks reduces the chances of fumes reaching any person over an extended period and gives people a reason to get away from their monitor and stretch their legs every now and then.

Use daylight to maximum benefit
A more comfortable working environment and reduced electricity bills for lighting can be achieved by optimising the use of natural light. Opening up the internal layout to allow daylight into all offices and putting desks where the occupant can look outside and use natural light both help. Fitting adjustable vertical blinds, which can be used to limit glare whilst impacting little on daylight are a better choice than horizontal blinds. Painting the walls and ceilings in light colours (and keeping them clean) also helps.

Reduce your energy use and overheads

  • replace any remaining tungsten filament lightbulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. A compact fluorescent bulb uses less than a quarter of the electricity of a tungsten filament bulb of equivalent brightness and will last about ten times as long;
  • turn off all monitors and printers when leaving the office for lunch and in the evening, in addition to shutting down the computers;
  • don't leave phone or laptop chargers plugged in when they aren't charging as this still uses a substantial amount of electricity;
  • switch off lights when there is no-one using the room;
  • switch your electricity account to a supplier that supports renewable energy through a 'green tariff';
  • you can reduce your footprint at work by encouraging everyone to turn off computers, monitors, lights, printers and copiers when not in use and setting all equipment to low-energy mode.

Don't overuse heating and cooling
Too many people - at home and at work - leave their heating on 24/7. Ensure that the timer is always set to switch off sometime before the office is vacated in the evening. If your office is too small to have a formal 'facilities management' function, ensure that at least two people know how to adjust the timer. Turn the heating down before opening a window.

Are you too reliant on air conditioning? Some buildings can be cooled effectively at night through ventilation alone - making it easier to keep cool during the day. Other air conditioning systems are set to run at too high a level and end up fighting local heaters introduced by dissatisfied building users. This is hugely wasteful, as you end up using huge amounts of energy to achieve... nothing.

Use recycled products and recycle yours
Make sure that your office paper is of the recycled variety and think about how you can recycle the office's waste. There are thousands of central deposits for recycling cans, bottles and paper across Scotland.

Also print double-sided documents with low quality settings, to reduce use of paper and toner.

Reduce water use
If you have old-fashioned toilets with larger (for example 9 litres or more) cisterns you can place a 'hippo' or similar product in the cistern to reduce flush volume. Most water companies will supply these free of charge.

Potted plants
Potted plants in the office will help occupants to connect with the natural world and have been shown to remove certain pollutants from the air, thereby improving indoor air quality.

Rethink your travel
Set up a lift sharing scheme for car-dependent commuters. For a large organisation, this might require an intranet, but in a smaller office word of mouth should work even better.

Buy from sustainable sources
When selecting new furniture and fittings look for products manufactured from sustainable sources. Many furniture manufacturers can offer products made with timber sourced from sustainable forests under the Forest Stewardship Council Chain of Custody system. These products have an FSC 'Tick Tree' logo and reference number on the packaging. Most timber products can be sourced from FSC-certified suppliers.

Develop a reuse system
Look at all products and devise a simple reuse plan for their end of life. This could include reuse by other parties that can make use of your old or unwanted items, from carpets to furniture.