The A-Z of a greener office

A is for A4

Every full-time housing worker uses about 9000 sheets of A4 per year, according to Sustainable Homes, a Housing Corporation-funded body that promotes awareness of sustainable development issues. You could halve this total by printing double-sided. Ask your

office manager if your printers can do this or encourage them to buy an attachment called a duplexer for about £200. Reuse waste paper by printing on the other side for internal notes and reuse envelopes internally – charities such as Oxfam sell sticky address labels that reseal envelopes for this purpose.

B is for buy recycled

It’s good to get into the habit of using recycling bins but, unless your organisation uses recycled stationery in the first place, you’re still feeding demand for raw materials. Ask your office manager to buy recycled printer paper, notebooks, pencils, pens and mouse mats, and direct them to the government-sponsored online directory www.recycledproducts.org.uk.

C is for computers

They rapidly become out of date, but are complex and expensive to recycle. Some firms collect old office computers for recycling, although this can be expensive. If they’re still working, reuse them by donating to community projects – even if they can’t cope with the latest housing software, they may be fine for domestic use. Thames Valley Housing Association has just started donating old PCs to tenants studying for computer qualifications. It takes 20 minutes for the IT team to wipe secure data from each PC’s hard drive, and they’re away.

Alternatively, give old PCs to Computer Aid International, which sends them to schools and community organisations in developing countries (www.computeraid.org).

D is for desks

If your office is having a refit, don’t chuck out unwanted desks, chairs and sofas: donate them. The Furniture Recycling Network (www.frn.org.uk) lists charities that accept furniture for people’s homes. Green Works takes unwanted office furniture off your hands for a membership fee and the cost of collection, and sells it cut-price to charities and community groups. Go to www.green-works.co.uk for details.

E is for energy suppliers

The electricity in your building is probably supplied by one of the big power companies, which get most of their energy from fossil fuels – but your procurement manager may be surprised to hear it’s easy to switch to a supplier that uses renewable fuel. Friends of the Earth does a comparison of the main suppliers on its website (you will need to search for “energy suppliers” at www.foe.co.uk), several of which promise to match the prices of your existing energy supplier.

F is for fair trade

Copy Wales & West Housing Association and ask whoever buys your office tea and coffee to get brands that won’t exploit farmers in the developing world.

F is also for the Forest Stewardship Council, a non-governmental organisation that gives its stamp to wood from sustainable sources. If you’re involved in development or repairs, use FSC wood when you can’t use recycled.

G is for green ‘champions’

More and more housing associations are asking employees to volunteer to promote their sustainability policies. Circle 33 has introduced office coordinators, who are charged with turning off unused lights, monitors, printers and photocopiers at the end of the day. They also advise colleagues on what sort of paper goes in which recycling bin.

H is for hippos

You can save three litres of water every time a toilet is flushed by using “hippos” – bags of air that sit in the cistern, displacing water and reducing the amount that goes out with each flush. Southdown Housing Association says the bags have saved 15% of the water used in its office toilets. Your water supplier should give them out for free – ask your procurement manager to find out more.

I is for incentives

Recycling and reducing energy use can save your employer money – so see if it will set up a reward scheme for good ideas. Jo Williamson of Sustainable Homes says: “If each department sets a target, any money saved by their efforts should be given back to that department.”

J is for joint efforts

You can save a lot of energy by grouping together.

Cut down on car pollution by sharing lifts to work with colleagues, joining a lift-sharing club (www.liftshare.org) or tracking down a local car club (www.carclubs.org.uk). These allow individuals who pay a monthly membership fee to hire cars from a local pickup point.

K is for know-how

Some housing associations send volunteers on courses to learn about sustainability, but you can also do your own homework. Sustainable Homes (www.sustainablehomes.co.uk) gives associations advice on all aspects of sustainability. National Energy Action (www.nea.org.uk) offers national vocational qualification energy efficiency training; and Construction Resources (www.constructionresources.com) runs training for development and maintenance workers. You can get free leaflets for colleagues or tenants from the Energy Saving Trust (www.est.org.uk) or advice from consultancy Beyond Green (www.beyondgreen.co.uk).

L is for liquid petroleum gas

LPG vehicles have lower emissions of carbon dioxide than petrol and fewer nitrogen oxides and particulates than diesel. Next time your organisation renews contracts for its fleet of vehicles, push for LPG – a mix of propane and butane. Vale Housing Association piloted six LPG vans in its maintenance fleet for a year. Spokeswoman Sian Llewellyn says: “Their fuel consumption is the equivalent of standard petrol vans but the lower cost of the LPG has led to cost savings as well as reduced emissions.” There is also low tax on gaseous fuels and the Energy Saving Trust gives out grants for new LPG vehicles or conversions.

M is for materials

According to construction research body BRE, about 12% of building materials come from recycled sources – mainly aggregates in concrete and wood in chipboard – but the proportion could be much higher. If you’re involved in development or repairs, investigate sustainable building materials. Try www.recycledproducts.org.uk for products such as benches made from recycled plastic or for materials, try ecological builders’ merchant www.constructionresources.com.

N is for no cost

Some companies collect recyclable materials for free from offices. Sometimes this is in exchange for a service you pay for. For example, if you let recycling company Paper Round have your old printer ink cartridges, it will collect your coloured paper for recycling. Contact your council to find other firms that do this.

O is for out-of-office

If, like many housing workers, you spend a lot of time out of the office visiting tenants and checking on building or community projects, consider whether it’s really necessary to go into the office at all. Working from home could save unnecessary journeys. If you do travel to work, ask your employer to put public transport-friendly policies in place. Jo Williamson says: “If people are going to come to work other than by private transport, employers have to be a bit more flexible about start times.” Check out your employer’s policies, put pressure on it to be flexible – or vote with your feet and move somewhere more accommodating.

P is for plants

According to Joanna Yarrow, director of consultancy Beyond Green, offices are full of toxins that accumulate in the body.

“All computing equipment contains heavy metals that through wear and tear will be released into the atmosphere,” she says. “Computers are also coated in brominated flame retardants, which are thought to be carcinogenic.” Fight this with foliage: approximately one plant per electrical device will absorb up to 87% of the worst chemicals. Particularly good are spider plants, rubber plants and English ivy.

Q is for questions

Sometimes the obvious questions get overlooked, but, by taking a closer look at how you and your colleagues work, you could reduce the impact you have on the environment. Williamson recalls meeting one association with two offices; when people from both offices got together, they realised officers from each were managing stock nearer the other one. “They were passing each other on the roads every day, so they said, ‘why don’t we swap our stock?’” The change cut down their journeys and reduced pollution.

R is for reduce

This is the most important of the three Rs – reduce, reuse, recycle. Be more selective when printing emails and avoid using items that can’t be reused, such as staples, unless you have to. Waste Watch, a charity that promotes waste reduction, says if everyone in UK offices conserved a staple a day, it would save 72 tonnes of metal each year. Would a paperclip do the job just as well?

S is for sheep’s wool

As any baa-baa will attest, wool is the original insulator. It’s also a popular option for insulation in new buildings or refurbishments. It’s natural, it’s renewable and because it can absorb and release water easily, it keeps houses warm in winter and cool in summer. Neither does it contain harmful chemicals and materials. Products such as Thermafleece (www.secondnatureuk.com/index.htm) are made using just 14% of the energy that is used to manufacture glass fibre insulation.

T is for transport

The National Society for Clean Air and Environmental Protection estimates that road transport accounts for 22% of total UK emissions of carbon dioxide. But half of all car journeys in the UK are less than two miles and cars are most polluting in the first few miles of a journey before they warm up.

If your job requires you to drive a lot, you could try making shorter journeys on foot or share lifts: a quick email might find someone in another department heading in the same direction. If you must drive, reduce emissions by accelerating smoothly and removing extra weight from the boot of your car.

U is for unwanted mail

If you’re on a mailing list for information you don’t want, save paper and transport costs by telling the sender. Likewise, update your mailing lists regularly so that you don’t bombard other people with snail mail. If you’re deluged with junk mail at home, visit the Mailing Preference Service (www.mpsonline.org.uk), where you can remove your address from public lists.

V is for vending machines

If you’re constantly going for tea breaks, don’t take the easy option of disposable vending machine cups. Use a proper mug and wash it up. If there is nowhere to wash up, contact Save A Cup (www.save-a-cup.co.uk) for a recycling scheme that collects polystyrene cups in your area.

W is for wormery

Turn office food waste into compost with one of these at work. Staff at Waste Watch have a wormery on their office balcony and recommend firms such as Wiggly wigglers (www.wiggly wigglers.co.uk), which supply worm bins and bags of worms. You supply the vegetable scraps, tea bags and someone who’s keen on the free, high-quality plant food wormeries produce, and cut your waste collection costs. So everyone’s happy.

X is for x-cellent Ecohomes

Excellent is the best rating awarded by BRE to developments of environmentally friendly housing. There are four ratings: pass, good, very good and excellent. The minimum standard required to get Housing Corporation funding is currently pass but, by 2007, this will be raised to good. Those judged excellent are few and far between and tend to be expensive, but it can be made more plausible by partnering with private developers.

Y is for (salvage) yards

When planning new developments or repairs, be truly sustainable by using materials salvaged from previous developments. This method is particularly good for smaller builds, where large quantities of similar materials are not essential. For a list of salvage specialists, see www.salvoweb.com. Finds range from large numbers of bricks and sturdy wooden flooring to antique bathroom and kitchen fittings or windows, but it might cost more in labour to ensure materials are useable.

Z is for zzzzzz

When you go home to bed, remember to shut down your building’s lights, machines and heating. Joanna Yarrow says contrary to hearsay, it’s definitely better to switch off heating in office buildings for the entire weekend, rather than to leave it on at a low level. It’s also worth switching your computer off if you leave it for more than an hour and switching off the monitor when you’re not using it – screens use almost two thirds of a computer’s total energy.