Ethical working practices reduce our carbon footprint

August 9th, 2008 | by Adam Lucking

Many business owners will have given thought to ethical work practices to ensure staff are treated fairly and provide guidance on how to deal with various issues. But have they given thought to ethical practices towards the environment?

There are many considerations to make that can help reduce your carbon footprint and Choregus has put together list that will help.

Use fair trade
We use huge amounts of tea, coffee, sugar and biscuits so why not consider fair trade options. They cost a little more but it is a good ethical practice and can make staff feel good about their contribution towards helping others who are not so fortunate.

Buy recyclable products
Make sure that the products you buy can be recycled.

Use recycle bins
Try to make sure that you recycle waste and that someone takes it to a recycle centre. Many local councils are offering recycle facilities and will even collect from businesses.

Switch off
Make sure you shutdown PCs and other electrical equipment at the end of the day. This will reduce costs and energy usage.

Energy saving bulbs
Even though they are more expensive you wouldn’t believe the amount of energy they save over a year, and the cost savings are even better.

Paperless office
Have you thought about employing a paperless environment? Think of all the trees you would save if you only printed when absolutely necessary.

So the driving factor to make an ethical environment work is making it fun rather than a basic chore. It is great for teambuilding and over time becomes a habit. Make sure you lead by example. How many of you are doing your bit for reducing that carbon footprint? Do you find it is working? Do you like it?

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  1. 2 Responses to “Ethical working practices reduce our carbon footprint”

  2. By Peter Chee on Aug 9, 2008 | Reply

    We’ve started a new company called thinkspace. We’re located in Redmond, WA USA. We provide sustainable shared office space, coworking space, meetings rooms in a “green” office building. We finished out our building out recently and are in the process of completing our paperwork for our LEED certification.

    We’ve been doing most of these things that you’ve listed, execpt going paperless. That is a rather tough one to do. There’s always the need to keep original lease documents but there are things that can be done such as use 100% post consumer recycled paper. We are doing the fair trade coffee as well!

    We installed automatic occupancy sensors in each room and used energy efficient ballasts and lamps. It’s dramatically keeping our energy costs down. We went with no-VOC paints, low-VOC carpet adhesives, and are using GreenGuard furniture. We love how healthy our space feels and everyone that uses are space appreciates it too.

    You can read more at the thinkspace blog: http://www.thinkspace.com/blog.

    -Peter

  3. By Shubhranshu on Aug 10, 2008 | Reply

    Adopting ethical work practices has become the demand of the modern time. I think there is more need to develop the trend of adopting these practices.

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