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Eco-friendly philosophies like flushing brown down but leaving yellow mellow might be stretching the boundaries of practical office policy, but you can bet your carbon footprint that many earth-friendly tactics could be easily implemented in our offices to counter our current cumulative battery of the earth. Before you cozy down to the hum of your desktop with your paper cup latte in its corrugated cardboard cozy and your enveloped pastry, let’s take a look at what we could be doing differently. (Hint: The last sentence contains the bare minimum of what we are still doing wrong and which could easily be remedied.)

Environmental awareness ebbs and flows and, at present, people seem to be paying closer attention to our mistreatment of Mama Earth. You may have noticed eco-tips cropping up here and there around your office. Suggestions for the minimization of energy and product consumption are fairly common ones. Forgoing disposable goods in favor of your own mugs, plates, and tableware (without the cleaning via dishwasher!), for example, just makes sense. Nixing the thermostat jockeying between workers by enforcing a set temperature (68 degrees!) in the office is another good one. Establishing recycling, composting, and carpooling standards for the office, allowing in only local and/or recycled products and instilling energy-saving measures like power strips to save energy in times when electronic equipment is not in use, and encouraging telecommuting opportunities, too, are great, viable options for most workplaces. But how about some new ideas? What are real life businesses doing to help the earth and what can your workplace be doing differently?

Keeping it real and down to earth
Jennifer Roberts, founder of shopcomposition.com and its physical counterpart located in the eco-friendly Belmar shopping district in Lakewood, Colorado (belmarcolorado.com) has ballasted her world of design on the principles of green living. Jennifer believes that the present and future of modern design is trending toward eco-friendliness, and she features only the best of those great ideas. She handpicks clothing, jewelry, housewares, furniture designs, and more that adhere to green means of production. But perhaps most admirable is Jennifer’s consistent adherence to the practice of what she peddles. Behind the scenes at Composition, eco-friendliness is happening at all times. All paper must be used front and back and, in a grand effort to reuse and repurpose as much as possible, all goods are given the once over before sending anything off to a landfill or even the recycling bin. She has used old index cards to create Composition business cards. Magazines and catalogues that would otherwise be tossed in the trash are used for spare parts, too. And those obnoxious packing peanuts that overload offices everywhere? Composition saves them up for a second and, hopefully, ongoing use. Jennifer has other great ideas, too, like adding the simple query “Do you really need to print this?” to the bottom of company emails to conserve paper or trying out the new Ecofont (ecofont.eu) prudently perforated to save ink. Consider your own workplace. Instead of accepting the way things are done, think about what simple changes to your office protocol could have big effects.

Green Living–a nurturing lifestyle
Sometimes big changes come in the form of what we bring into our workplaces. According to Earth and Sky Gardens co-owner, Brooke Munsinger, if more companies thought to structure their offices more earth-friendly from the ground up, adding in plant life wherever possible, the health rewards would affect not only the immediate workplace environment but could react globally. Earth and Sky Gardens (earthandskygardens.com) is doing its best to encourage green living –- both literally and figuratively. Installing plants improves air quality, combats Sick Building Syndrome, and increases oxygen levels, so finding a way to incorporate plants into your work environment is a great and aesthetically pleasing way to make environmental contributions. This Denver metro based operation offers a variety of lease and sell plant options so just about anyone can incorporate greenery into their environment. Their installation of green roofs, which can “reduce the ambient air temperature by 10 degrees,” and the highly innovative new concept of living walls, a garden incorporated into an existing wall, provides energy-saving insulation to residences and offices with the same earth-pleasing effects of regular plant presence –- only tenfold for its greater abundance of plant life. If your office is not yet ready for a commitment to green roof or living wall installations, try starting with a simple plant in your immediate workspace. From there, find ways to integrate more and more plant life into the entire office setting. Consider plant gifts for coworkers. Or, start a plant initiative for the whole office. You may not be able to get your boss to sign off on a big-time plant budget, but maybe you could take on this task yourself. Adding more plants to your workplace translates to better health for you, your coworkers, and the world at large.

Environmental savvy individuals are regularly discovering easy and innovative new ways to incorporate sustainable practices into the way we do business. Colorado-based Fiddlehead Designs, (fiddleheadconcrete.com) award-winning artisans in the craft of concrete creations for home and office settings, have based their art on such sustainable practices. They utilize eco-friendly concrete, reclaimed material, by-products, and local goods in their designs. Plus, their studio and shop are 100% wind-powered and they donate at least 2% of their profits to environmental and social causes. Beyond the good work they do as an intrinsically environmentally aware business, co-owner Matthew Petersen has suggestions for other workplaces, too. Matt offered the idea of incorporating “daylighting” into office settings. By directing natural light through windows to the spaces workers need it most, tons of artificial light energy could be saved. He also mentioned the incorporation of electronic signatures wherever possible. Gone are the days when it was necessary to print page after page to capture single signatures! Last but not least, just like Fiddlehead Designs, all businesses should consider helping out a good cause. Fiddlehead Designs is a member of One Percent for the Planet, (onepercentfortheplanet.org) a global organization of companies that donate 1% of their sales to environmental causes. Your workplace could spare 1%, couldn’t it?

Today’s 3 R’s: reuse, recycle, reduce
Many workplaces do not readily lend themselves to meeting green living goals. In fact, sometimes, with their tendencies toward overall wastefulness, workplaces often reflect an anti-green movement. You may go through all of the appropriate hierarchical channels and still not convince the higher-ups that they could be doing things differently. But YOU can make the difference. Reuse, recycle, and reduce on your own and others will follow. Start up earth friendly initiatives to provide coworkers with the opportunity to be green. And even if you feel your bosses are tiring of your suggestions for energy audits, junk mail banishments, and composting stations, slowly they, like the rest of us, will come around to paying attention to what little things we could be doing differently. It all adds up.