The workplace can be a starting point for environmentalism. At first, a corporate office seems to be antithetical to the tenets of sustainability. After all, isn’t capitalism part of what is affecting the climate? The sad truth is, until we find an alternative, we have to make do with recycling paper and using office recycling bins. It may not seem much in the greater scope of things, but consistency is key. It turns compassion into a habit and eases the problems of the world a little bit more. Every little action matters to address this issue.
So what are these little actions? What else can we do to help our world out in an office setting?
Trim the Process
Paper is something almost synonymous to the office setting, with the different forms we have to fill out to get even more of them. Thank goodness, this unnecessary bureaucracy is slowly diminishing. With the advent of the digital age, the use of paper has had an immense transformation. One can sign their signature on electronic tablets. Emails and other messages are sent without having to be printed for the receiver to access it. Files are delivered promptly to the cloud.
With such practices, the use of paper has become practically passe. In many cases, hard copies of files are needed to preserve data should the need arise. There looms, after all, the threat of cyber attacks. But one can still combat paper wastage by reusing blank pages behind printed copies or using recycled paper. Instead of disposing paper immediately, find a way to let them go through a recycler for future use.
Make It Fun
Innovation is another key to sustainability. It will also enhance productivity as it encourages you to make use of your intelligence and soft skills. You can convert old file folders into laptop cases, for instance, or use ballpen containers made out of tin cans. To get the whole office in the game, hold recycling contests instead of team-building events. Such environmental-friendly activities will not only encourage camaraderie among employees and improve their relationships with each other. But it will also help them come up with different solutions to a myriad of problems, whether office-related or environment-related.
The skills that they will utilize for the sake of the environment will also enable them to face different and unrelated challenges within the office environment. Plus, whatever they learn from their experience can be used as a starting point for gearing the company’s products and services into a direction that puts the fate of humanity and our planet as its utmost priority.
We all need to work to survive. However, we only have one planet where this is all possible. By encouraging environmental-friendly solutions in the office, we are hitting two birds with a single stone. We get to use our creativity, thinking skills, capacity to empathize, ability to look forward, and insights to create something sustainable to both the needs of the company and its employees, as well as everybody else beyond the four walls of the office.
