The following article is part of a series of posts I am dedicating to improving environmental awareness in the workplace. No matter who you work for, there is always an opportunity to make your job a little “greener”.
Wouldn’t it be nice if every company in the world had a well funded environmental advisory board? Each board could oversee the company’s operation ensuring that it was conducted in the most environmentally conscious manner possible.
While we may not live in this “perfect world”, your employer needs people like you (they just don’t know it yet) to shape its environmental program by examining the environmental aspects of its operations and brainstorming ways to minimize them as part of a continuous improvement process.
Companies want to be known as innovative and progressive when it comes to protecting the environment. Unfortunately, budget constraints, or a lack of managerial know how get in the way.
Not only does being “green” project a better image for the company in the eyes of its shareholders and clients, it’s also the right thing to do.
If the company notices that its employees are investing their own time finding greener ways to do things, it will be more receptive to an improvement opportunity an employee may suggest.
If you are interested in making your workplace more eco-friendly, here are a few tips and ideas to help you shape a new culture of environmental stewardship in your organization.
Step #1) Identify the Environmental Aspects of Your Company
Take a good look at your company’s current environmental impacts and assess what problem areas you would like to improve. Typical areas of improvement might be to:
-Implement or Improve Your Company’s Recycling Program
-Minimize the Amount of Office Waste being GeneratedAlthough identifying improvement areas in your company’s operation is an important first step, you will never identify every opportunity the first time around. Some improvements (i.e. recycling) will seem obvious at first, while other improvement opportunities may go unnoticed for years.
-Reduce the Amount of Fuel Burned by Company Vehicles
-Find More Environmentally Friendly Packaging for Your Company’s Products
-Use “Greener” Raw Material in the Company’s Manufacturing Process
The important thing is to sort through your organization’s environmental aspects and pick one or two projects that you feel you can tackle without spreading your resources too thin.
You also want to make sure that the first project that you undertake can be done with little or no cost to the company. Let’s be honest here, your company may want to be a little greener but the last thing they want to do is shell out a bunch of cash, especially in these rough financial times.
Low cost (or free) environmental improvements around the work place will open the door to more comprehensive projects down the road.
So grab your 100% post consumer waste note pad and follow along; it’s time to start shifting some environmental paradigms…
Read Part Two Here
