At safedrop we’re fanatical about saving trees and carbon, here’s some simple steps we follow to keep things green and save a bit of cash.
Cycle
Cars are responsible for a significant proportion of overall CO2 emissions, so if you can get to work on a bike, you can help and get fit too. Sign up for http://www.cyclescheme.co.uk/ – it gives employees a huge discount on bikes, and makes everyone feel great!
If you’re in London hop on one of Boris’s bikes (TfL) and save a taxi trip. That will win points with Finance too! If you can’t cycle, grabbing a cheap train ticket may be the best of a bad bunch when it comes to public transport.
It’s 2010 – if you’re reading this, you can work from anywhere!
AVOID TRAVEL ALL TOGETHER! One of the biggest carbon emitters in the UK is transport, and the daily commute is among the most frequent and stressful journeys we make. Working from home a few days a week saves carbon, and can also be amazingly productive. According to telework research home working can save companies $10K per employee yearly! http://bit.ly/bWlVsy
(Forget about money, improve your lifestyle & productivity by working somewhere different in summertime. I’ve had some amazingly productive weeks in odd places!)
Cancel the courier
Instead of printing out and sending, or burning to cd-rom, use a secure file sending service like our own safedrop to send documents. Saves time, couriers, post, printers and paper all in one go. If you really have to courier (do you really have to?) order a cycle courier.
Use a mobile phone to easily send copies and sign things.
Modern phones will let you take a photo and send it as an email saving printing, signing, sticking in an envelope and posting. Apps like DocScanner even make nice PDF’s out of your images (works on iPhone, Android and Nokia phones)
Skip water canisters
They don’t do anything, and the environmental impact of transporting bottled water is huge. Get some nice jugs and put water in the fridge. If you feel flash buy a mains filtered water cooler.
Meet online
We save on hundreds of meetings a year by using online services like gotomeeting.com or glance.net instead. (gotomeeting is great as it has built in conference call numbers. Glance is super fast, and *always* works, following our own ‘no plugin’ rule!). It can actually be easier to collaborate online with something like google docs, than to sit around a table, with everyone making different notes.
Print smart
Get double sided printers to save paper. When you’re printing, print 2 pages per sheet. If you only have single sided printers, leave a tray available so paper can be placed there for re-use. Set printer profiles to make 2 per page or double sided printing easy for non geeky types.
And all the usual stuff – ink & paper recycling, switch off equipment & lights, open a window or put a jumper on!
Have you any great ideas here we’ve missed? Where have you done your best work from? We’d love to hear from you.
