"The Importance of a Green Office"

By Darrel R.
Green Office Store.com's Associate Content Editor
September 1, 2007

If you’ve at all been thinking about putting together your own green office, there are some statistics that very possibly could be the final determining factor for you. Paper, office supplies and furniture that cannot be recycled accounts for a massive amount of materials that clutter landfills today.

Paper

In terms of putting together a green office, paper and paperboard is consumed in massive amounts each year. In fact, most of the paper we use in our offices today, still ends up as waste. Simply creating the paper causes environmental problems, as toxic chemicals are released into the air making printing, copying and writing paper. These emissions increase the pollution in the air and do harm the respiration of those living around paper mills.

You can make your office greener by setting your copying machine to copy on both sides of every sheet of paper, by reducing standard-sized copying images to fit two documents on one sheet, and by reusing paper as scrap.

Office Supplies

Non-green offices hurt the environment by using and discarding many, many transparency films, single-use pens, printer cartridges and clipboards. A recent Green Report found that 1.6 million pens that can only be used once are used each year in just the United States. The report found that 15-million pounds of polyester transparency films are thrown away in the U.S. annually and that if businesses would remanufacture their ink cartridges, they would be saving about $1.5 billion each year.

If you focus on reusing office products and buying multiple-use products rather than single-use products, you can not only save money for your organization but you can also do your part to help the environment. You can also do your part by buying office products that don’t have toxic solvents and products that can be remanufactured instead of taking up space in landfills.

Office Furniture

There are two main environmental issues with standard wooden office furniture and equipment. The first is that by simply creating the pieces of furniture, their construction is depleting the forest and mineral reserves. The second is that the manufacturing processes of making furniture pollute the air and our water supply through volatile organic compounds. In fact, by simply having the furniture sitting in your office, it may continue to discharge these compounds into the air.

You can help the environment by buying office furniture that meets indoor air quality standards for your state, that contains nontoxic materials and adhesives and that is made from recycled plastics, paper, wood, and steel. You also want to look for manufacturers that emit a limited amount or no volatile organic compounds.