Ask Remabulous Earth Day: 6 Tips for a greener home office!

For this week's Ask Remabulous Column, I turned to my friend Lisa Tholen, founder of Greener By Design. As a LEED AP, Green Coach, and Sustainability Consultant, Lisa advises on a wide range of activities including LEED building certification, sustainability education sessions, green janitorial, recycling and waste reduction, eco audits, energy conservation, green team facilitation, and green moves and furniture installations.

I know we all want to do our part on Earth Day (and every day) so I asked Lisa what we creative people- many of whom work from home- can do to green up our workspaces.

Here are her 6 Tips For a Greener Home Office:

1.     1. Buy office products with the highest post consumer recycled content possible, and bleached without chlorine bleach.  Copy paper, note pads, file folders, letterhead, paper towels, napkins, toner cartridges, etc.  Search on “recycled” when placing your office supplies order.

2.     2. Narrow the default margins on your documents and print on both sides of the page.  Use mistakes for scratch paper.

3   3.  Turn off all office equipment and computers at night, or ensure that they go into energy saving sleep mode.  Make sure you turn off both the monitor and the system unit on your computer.  Only leave them on if necessary for backup purposes.

4.    4. Switch to compact fluorescent lighting (CFL) if you haven’t already.  CFL’s last much longer and use far less electricity than standard incandescent bulbs.  Home Depot and IKEA have a wide variety of shapes, base sizes, and color temperatures to meet your needs - including dimmable!  Both also take them back for recycling when they burn out in 5 or 10 years.

5.    5. When it comes time to replace office equipment, look for the Energy Star® label, which indicates equipment that is more efficient, costing you less money in the long run.

6.   6. Garbage in – garbage out.  Buy less stuff!  Do you really need that gadget?  Buy things with the least amount of packaging so that there is less to dispose of.

     Thank you so much for sharing, Lisa!  Lisa does consultations for business owners, so if you're looking to get a more specialized consultation, contact her! Her expertise has helped businesses not only go greener, but save lots of money in energy costs as well. 

     Lisa Tholen is a LEED® accredited professional with more than 15 years of experience in Sustainability, Facilities Management, Project Management, and the Design Industry.  LEED®, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the Green Building Rating System developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, is a voluntary, consensus-based, market-driven building rating system based on existing proven technology.  Becoming a LEED® accredited professional demonstrates a knowledge and understanding of green building practices and technologies.