BLOG

As the corporate world moves towards adopting sustainable and eco-friendly practices, you might be wondering how your own business can embrace the trend. Going green doesn’t have to be hard, and your office can be environmentally friendly with only a few minor changes to your usual routine. Making small decisions can go a long way towards making your office more efficient, economical, and – surprisingly – secure!

Energy efficient appliances and items are widely available at reasonable prices now, and the Government of Canada also has developed tax incentives for those businesses that embrace energy efficient alternatives. Going online and seeing what the government can help with is simple. You can find rebates, tax incentives, and even loans to fund appliance and fixture upgrades. The government’s Power Saving Blitz program awards small businesses up to $1, 000 in free products and installations for energy efficient electronics. In Ontario, the Water Efficiency Plan sets aside financial incentives for retrofitting your water systems to be less wasteful.

With the government’s help, you can use your tax breaks and rebates to purchase green products for your office. Converting your lighting to compact fluorescent lights (CFL) or light-emitting diode (LED) sources will cut down on your electricity use and your electricity bill. Installing occupancy sensors will ensure that these lights aren’t accidentally left on for longer than they need to be, as they are designed to turn off when the mechanism doesn’t pick up any movement within the room. That way, no energy (or money) is wasted when someone forgets to turn the lights off at the end of the workday.

The easiest way to cut down on waste is to remove the opportunity to create it. Readjust your company platform so that it relies less on physical copies of documents and memos, replacing those paper files with digital ones. They can be easily shared with a click of a button, and better yet, they take up little to no room in storage space.

Sometimes, going paperless isn’t a possibility. For when you have no choice but to print and store physical copies of your documents, be sure that your office is using post-consumer waste (PCW) paper products and packaging. PCW is made from discarded material which would otherwise take up space in overcrowded garbage dumps. It also reduces the amount of new trees felled in order to produce new paper products. Consider the paper company that provides office with its supplies carefully, ensuring that they use recycled material.

Eventually, your paper products will have to go somewhere, and it would be thoughtless to throw them out into the garbage bins when you’ve done so much to go green. Installing recycling bins is a must for any business, as is ensuring that your employees understand what can and cannot be recycled. Install separate bins for paper, metal, and plastic waste with guides above each bin to remind those that are unsure of what goes where.

Our shredding services can help with the installation of recycling receptacles, as we have a variety of consoles and containers designed specifically to store material until you’re ready to dispose of it. We can supply locked bins, tent cards, and canvas bags to facilitate paper recycling. Our service also includes picking up the full containers and ensuring that its contents are before it’s recycled to ensure any confidential material (like account numbers and client information) cannot be retrieved. For every metric tonne of paper that we recycle, your office contributes towards saving 17 trees, 7,000 gallons of water, and 4100 khW.

Hiring our commercial services is just one of the many ways to embrace green and push your office towards environmental sustainability. Along with outfitting your lighting with energy efficient settings and reducing your overall waste, shredding and recycling paper will decrease your negative environmental impact. It’s also one of the only ways to ensure that your business’ confidential material is never shared or distributed to the wrong people. Contact us today and we’ll help you get one step closer to being green.