AT THE OFFICE
Job description: protecting the planet
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Office buildings are a major consumer of resources: they use a significant amount of electricity for heating / cooling, lighting and operating equipment. Your actions at work can contribute to the energy performance of the building, but also to the fight against climate change. With simple actions, you can reduce greenhouse gas emissions or save resources.
”The biggest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.”
Robert Swan
How does a sustainable professional behave?
• Advise the building administrator to turn off the heating for the weekend.
• Turn off the computer completely at the end of the working day (do not be fooled by the standby or sleep function, the computer continues to use power this way).
• Put your mobile phone in power save mode so that it does not need to be charged as often.
• Do not print emails.
• Set the printer to automatically print in duplex, black and white.
• Recycle paper whenever possible.
• Replace tea bags and single doses of coffee with tea bought in bulk and coffee made using a coffee maker or espresso machine.
• Opt for online meetings, video conferencing or teleconferencing if it is not necessarily a face-to-face discussion.
• Share the car with colleagues when you have meetings.
• Implement a recycling system for electronics, batteries, cartridges and paper.
• Don't forget about plants - they purify the air and calm you.
• Open the window and ventilate.
• Choose sustainable corporate gifts.
• Eat food brought from home.
• Recycle meshes: they can be transformed into folders, bags and other useful objects!
GOOD TO KNOW!
• The offices of large companies and public institutions generate large quantities of recyclable paper, but the habit of tearing or shredding the paper reduces the possibility of recycling. Arriving on the sorting tape, these pieces of paper are lost, because no one stays to pick each piece separately.
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• More than 7 billion coffee capsules (approximately 13,500 per minute) made of aluminum and plastic are thrown away annually. In addition, we tend to not recycle or collect this waste incorrectly, as the legislation does not consider it to be packaging and be placed in special collection points. Tea bags also contribute to environmental pollution, as they contain nylon or polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a type of petroleum-based plastic.