When you spend a larger chunk of your day at the workplace, you likely contribute towards the overall carbon footprint.
A greener workplace can mean a lighter ecological footprint, a healthier and more productive place to work, and good news for the bottom line. Whether you’re the boss or the employee, whether your office is green already or is blissfully ignorant of the need of the day, you have the power to make a difference- in whatever little way.
While your organization is in charge of doing large scale initiatives that affect an organization-wide change and eventually a culture shift, there are a few things that you in your individual capacity can work on, on this Earth Day to be ecofriendly at work. All you need is a little inspiration, and some motivation. Go do your bit!
1. Make room for indoor plants.
Closed office spaces can be a little boring and too gray for comfort. How about bringing a little nature to your desk?
There are some resilient indoor plants which not only provide you with the much needed fresh air, but they also beautify your surroundings. Browse this list of of 50 best indoor plants that clean the air around you. But for the lazier ones, there’s always the cactus and the money plant that can kept in a bottle with no maintenance.
2. Minimize the use of disposable plastic materials
Plastic is currently the biggest pollutant of our planet, the less it is disposed, the better for all of us. Instead of using those disposable plastic water bottles, why not keep a reusable water bottle at your desk? Also, Office chai tastes equally good when taken from a glass mug, so try to avoid disposables! Plus, these days you get really funky water bottles and mug. Seriously, plastic cups are uncool and boring. We’d rather get these — you can check out a personal bottle with filter here.
3. Minimize the use of paper
If you knew the number of trees that are cut to make paper, you’d rethink your stance on using paper whenever not necessary at all. (And when is it anyway?)
Still taking print outs? Get a kindle already!
Using a tissue so often? You know you can carry a good old hankerchief, which can be washed later and re-used. And why do all the emails and other documents at work need to be printed just to be looked at once and fed to the shredder? The world’s moving to the cloud. Encourage yourself and your colleagues to print as little paper as possible and enjoy living in a digital world.
4. Conserve Energy
Switch off appliances and gadgets when not in office. Turn off the lights and projector screens when you leave a room. Even if you find lights on in some room, step up and switch them off. You don’t pay for the electricity bill at work, but the planet does! Be judicious in your use, your employer will benefit, our planet will benefit, and you’ll develop a good habit which you’ll end up using at your place too so yeah, you’ll benefit too.
5. Don’t waste food
Worldwide, about one-third of all food produced, worth around US$1 trillion, gets lost or wasted in food production and consumption systems, according to data released by FAO. Meanwhile, in the United States alone, up to 40% of all food produced is wasted.
Usually offices provide free meals to employees. And like all free food, it does get boring after a while. Instead of taking plateful and then throwing away later, you can taste your food and decide how much you’d rather have. 
6. Cut down on the air pollution on your commute
Use public transport or office cabs or better yet, cycle to work. Gain health, save fuel.
Even better, WFH whenever possible! 😀
(Recommended Read: 14 Reasons Why Working From Home Is Awesome)
7. Recycle
A lot of us love to have our cold drinks every now and then, and you can’t help the fact that they come in plastic bottles. But instead of throwing them right away, you can recycle these for innovative use cases! Also, it can help to use an eco commercial cleaning company.
8. Conserve Water
You really don’t need the tap running while you look at yourself in the mirror! It happens with the best of us, we went there to wash our hands and lingered on, looking at our charming selves while leaving the tap on. Let’s not do that.
9. Join/start an environment friendly club
You, along with a few determined colleagues can help take things to the next level. Help clean office surroundings doing something like TUI, plant a tree near your workplace, implement environment friendly practices at work (like banning the usage of disposable plastic, or increasing the number of indoor plants). This list is practically endless!
10. Lend your voice
While work may be keeping you too busy to go out there and participate actively in any conservation activity, you can spare a few minutes while sitting at your desk and contribute to many causes by a simple email, an online petition or even donations.
Check out some of the causes, World Earth Day could use a little help with. The more the voices, the louder the appeal of a causes.
How many of these efforts do you make to do your bit towards environment sustainability? Is your organization doing anything to deserve a mention?
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