Reduce at Work

Reducing means minimizing all types of waste—even the stuff that we toss into recycling bins. While we certainly want to cut back on the waste we send to landfills, we also want to cut back on the waste we send to recycling facilities.

Transporting and processing recyclable waste impacts the environment. Although this impact is smaller than the impact of processing and transporting new materials, the more we shrink it down, the healthier the planet.

Reduce your paper use.

Wasting paper is quite possibly the most rampant office eco-crime being committed around the world today. The average office worker goes through 73 kilograms (160 pounds) of paper each year. Multiply that by the number of people in your office, and that’s an awful lot of paper!

Here are just a few ways you can cut back on your paper use:

• Make only the number of copies that you need. Many of us have a bad habit of running off extra copies of documents “just to be safe,” but these extras usually just pile up on our desks, or are left behind on boardroom tables.
• Double-side everything you print and photocopy. Modern machines make this very easy for you to do!
• Shrink your margins. Word processing programs usually give us more margin space than we need. Reducing the sizes of your margins (top, bottom, left and right) is often just a simple click and drag.
• Use the “printer friendly” option when printing a web page. Most sites will give you this option, which gets rid of advertisements and unnecessary graphics, and can save you a whole lot of paper!

Aim for waste-free lunches and coffee breaks.

Schools across the province have implemented waste-free or waste-less lunch programs, and it makes good sense for offices to do the same.

Paper cups, Styrofoam containers, plastic bags and wrap, and disposable plates and cutlery can all be easily replaced by reusable alternatives.

A waste-free or waste-less lunch…

includes most or all of the following:

• Reusable lunch bag or lunch box
• Reusable food and drink containers
• Cloth napkins
• Cutlery that can be washed and reused (this doesn’t have to mean your household’s silverware – you can buy inexpensive cutlery specifically for this purpose)

And excludes most or all of the following:

• Paper and plastic bags (including plastic sandwich bags)
• Foil, wax paper and plastic wrap
• Single-use cans, bottles and cartons
• Paper napkins
• Disposable cutlery

In addition to being good for the environment, waste-free lunches also tend to be healthier and cheaper than regular lunches.

A regular lunch—which includes, non-reusable packaging and containers—costs, on average, $4.02 per day. A waste-free lunch—which includes reusable packaging and containers—costs, on average, $2.65 per day.