Reducing At Work

(this is 2 pages, if you're printing)

All of the ways outlined to reduce your carbon footprint at home can and should be used at work. Listed below are additional ways and the statistics to go along with them. Even if you wish to remain anonymous in your Lenten Fast, you can still do your part at work without telling others what you’re doing.

Electric
The numbers for electric use in the office are staggering. 70% of all electric used in the US is in an office setting. 44% of the electric use is for heating and air conditioning, while lighting is another 40%. Simple actions on your part will reduce this number dramatically.

Turn your computer off at night. Since no one is using it for 15 hours of the day, there is no sense in leaving it on, unless it must be certain nights for IT maintenance. This alone will save 50% - 60% in the electric used by your workstation.

Turn the lights off in your area. The only time lights should be left on is if you work in a high rise and leave them on for a few weeks in spring and fall while certain birds migrate at night. Turn off lights in rooms not being used – do this as you walk by.

Don’t use a space heater under your desk. Bring a piece of upholstery foam in to rest your feet upon. This will keep your feet very warm without using any electricity. You can also buy radiant mats and foot rests that use far less electricity. Use a lap blanket.

Gasoline
If you live near any of your coworkers, consider carpooling. Whether you take turns or designate a driver, you all save on gas and auto maintenance.

Recycling
If your office/building doesn’t recycle, set up bins for you to take home and include in your recycling. With offices using an average of 10,000 sheets of paper per person per year, recycling this will save enormous amounts of energy, water and trees. Contact the ink/toner cartridge suppliers about recycling.

Lights
If you use incandescent lights in your workspace, replace one bulb with a CFL. The combination of light will be better for you and you will reduce the electric used in lighting your space by almost half.

Air Quality
Bring a plant to work. Many plants thrive in low or artificial lighting and greatly reduce the impurities in the air. Offices are very toxic environments with chemicals floating about such as benzene, TCE, carbon monoxide, and formaldehyde. These can be reduced quickly and efficiently with the addition of plants.

The Break room
Bring a mug in from home. The amount of energy used to make, use, throw away and store Styrofoam in a landfill significantly outweighs the same numbers for a mug from home. The choice becomes clear when the average “life” of a ceramic mug is 3000 days and a Styrofoam cup is 15 minutes. Bring in your own flatware, rather than the plastic knives, forks and spoons given with take-out food or supplied in the break room.

Consider asking your manager about the following:
Installing programmable thermostats . This act will pay for itself in about 4 months, saving up to 20% in heating and air conditioning bills. This will allow for a temperature setting that will reduce space heater use, cutting down on bills even further.

Office Equipment
Replace tower computers with laptops. Laptops generally use half the energy of a tower; more if it is an energy efficient model. Even replacing the monitor will help.

Replace office equipment with Energy Star equipment . There may also be tax incentives to assist with the purchases.

Lighting
Install motion-sensing light switches. There are many models on the market that will fit the needs of any room that isn’t used constantly, such as break rooms or restrooms. There are also Energy Star light fixtures that can replace broken fixtures.

Purchase remanufactured Ink/Toner cartridges
Using remanufactured cartridges saves an entire half-gallon of oil or 11 pounds of carbon emissions per cartridge.

Janitorial Chemicals
Replace janitorial supplies less hazardous materials. These contribute almost as heavily to indoor air pollution as the printers/copiers do.

Delivering
If your office also makes deliveries, consider using the UPS style of delivering – use right turns only. It saves enormous amount of gasoline over the course of the year.

Recycled Paper Products
Making 1 ton of virgin pulp paper uses nearly 72,000 gallons of water, whereas recycled paper needing 1/10 the water, 60% of the energy and 50% the chemicals.

Using recycled paper products in the break room and restrooms will also save. In home use, replacing a single pack of napkins and toilet paper with recycled a brand saves 2.4 million trees.

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Reduce Your Gasoline Use by 10%

Americans are addicted to their gas. Period. We drive an average of 12,000 miles per year, which is nearly 33 miles per day. With 240 million cars on the road, that’s a lot of gas. So how can we improve mileage? We all know the drill: Keep your tires properly inflated, get your car tuned up, get a clean air filter, empty the trunk of extra weight, get rid of the roof rack when you’re not using it. But there are other things you can do that may take just a little practice, but are simple, saving you TIME and gas.

Combine your errands. I know one person who must leave the house at least 5 times per day, every day. But if all of those trips were combined into 1, the savings would be at least 20% for gas and who knows for time. The act of combining your errands into a single outing will save you an average of 5%.

Make right turns only. UPS began this practice back in 2004, saving them 3.1 million gallons of fuel each year. It saves them time, fuel and insurance due to far fewer accidents. The saying goes – 10,000 sailors can’t be wrong. What about 80,000 UPS vehicles?

Don’t warm your car up. If the temperature is below freezing, the engine needs only about 1 minute running time prior to driving. If the temperature is above freezing, the engine needs no time to warm up. Oil has changed substantially since the early days of automotives. There is no need to warm it up and re-lubricate the inner workings of your engine.

Review hyper-miling. Visit Hyper-Miling on ways to increase your car’s mileage. Don’t drive like speed racer, and other simple, but effective ways to be nicer to your car and your gas bill.

Don’t drive 1 day a week. Ask your boss if you can work from home 1 day per week. Or, don’t travel any on a weekend day. Either of these choices will cause you to plan your week differently, but you might actually find it very enjoyable.

Use the car with the better mileage for the longer trips. In-town driving is a great equalizer of autos. But the highway miles can really show the hog from the miser. So if you have one commute that is long and another that is short, use the miser for the longer commute. It will save you incredible sums.

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