The little things we can do can make a BIG difference to our World

Reducing Waste

The need for businesses to act is being fuelled by pressure from both legislation and customers to reduce the environmental impact of their products. Businesses need to look carefully at both the products themselves and how they are made. Cleaner product design means minimising a product's environmental impact over its entire lifetime and still meeting customer requirements.

Did you Know?

There are millions of tonnes of office waste produced every year from photocopying to plastic coffee cups to unwanted PC's.
The cost of managing and treating the waste can be up to 5-20 times more than the cost of disposal.

Buildings produce around 72.5million tones of waste each year.
According to the Scottish oil campaign, waste oil for nearly 3 million car oil changes in Britain is not collected. If collected properly this could meet the annual energy needs of 1.5 million people.

A few things you can do:

So simple

You can save 10 tonnes of waste by re-manufacturing 10old office desks instead of throwing them out or donating 400 old PC's to charity for reuse in developing countries. Get people to think twice by making it more difficult to throw things away, i.e. install easily accessible central recycling facilities.

Easy when you know how

Check on the recyclability of the material being used and for the embodied energy content (the energy which has been used to make the product). Encourage suppliers and contractors to take back waste for re-use and recycling.

Saving Energy
 

In the UK, we waste the equivalent of around two power stations worth of electricity each year by leaving TV sets, gadgets and other modern home comforts on standby. Would you believe that 8% of all domestic electricity consumption is wasted by appliances being left on standby, costing British households approximately £247 million per year; energy and money that could easily be saved by pressing the ‘off' button.

Not only is this bad news for the environment; it's not good for human productivity either . In Britain, we are all responsible for cranking up the heating in the cold weather but did you know that your concentration levels reduce by up to 50% in an office if the temperature rises above 24C?

A few simple things you can do

So Simple

Next time you're away from your desk for a considerable length of time, switch off your computer screen. If 20 people followed suit, you could save 1kg of CO2 in one hour. Using an energy saving light bulb over four days instead of a standard 100w bulb will also save you the same amount.

Buy an MFP (multi function device) instead of buying four individual devices. An MFP can print, fax, copy and scan; meaning you eliminate the need to power four separate devices; saving you energy and money.

FACT

A computer left on all the time costs about £37 a year to run. If switched off at night and weekends, it costs £10 a year and saves enough energy to make almost 35,000 cups of coffee.

Want to read more?

Simply dowload the FREE PDF "Guide to being Green" to read the complete article.