Reducing Waste at the Office

If you live your life in a way that creates less waste in the first place, you can then worry less about recycling it or disposing of it later. Not to mention the financial saving you can make by living a cleaner and less wasteful lifestyle. Changing our daily habits is the way to go. Think about all the ways you can reduce your waste. Have a think about all aspects of your life sport, job, at play or at home. There are a lot of ways available to most people to reduce their waste. You can save a lot of money, time and be good to the earth all at the same time.

At the office: A4 sheets of paper are the most wasted components on average in offices throughout the world. The average office worker in western society uses about 10,000 sheets per year.

Reduce Paper Use: 1. Try to use both sides of paper for printing. 2. Reuse paper that has only been printed on one side. This can be used for things such as drafts, sketches, throw-away documents, temporary signs or even meeting agendas. 3. Of course E-Mail is one of the best ways to reduce printing. You should only really print the things you absolutely need to. 4. Bookmark websites rather than printing them. This makes even more sense considering the webpage can be updated since you last printed it! 5. Use electronic media for your records. CD-ROM, Portable Hard Drives, USB Memory Devices. 5. Try to minimize mis-prints by posting instructions and diagrams on how to create the various types of prints your office uses such as letterheads or specialized sizes or features that only you use in your office. 6 Have a good working knowledge about your printer. You can reduce the size of your documents to get more than 1 page per A4. You can easily get two pages of a book onto 1 A4 page for example. Waste Management

Greener Printing: 1. When possible print on both sides of paper, reduce width of margins and font sizes. This reduces waste and saves resources and most importantly your cash. 2. Keep mailing lists updated and know your data. Avoid duplicates and target your mails to specific audiences. 3. You can get special types of paper which is brightened without the use of chlorine. Chlorine bleaching creates a toxic, bio-accumulate waste by-product called dioxin. If you demand this type of paper, you can help to create new markets which will in turn encourage paper mills to move away from dangerous polluting production practices. This type of paper is usually labelled totally chlorine free (TCF) or processed chlorine free (PCF). Both terms means the mill did not use chlorine in their production practices. 4. Request inks which are not based on petroleum products. Soybeans or linseed would be good examples of alternatives. Finally: Approx. Two thirds of all copy machines are duplex-capable (this means they can print on both sides of the paper). However, the duplexing rate average is only about 15%. This allows much leeway in reducing waste simply by educating co-workers about using the full sheet.