Because I work from home, I spend a lot of time in my home office. Well, in theory I should be spending most of my time there, but since I still haven’t fully unpacked my office from our move in May, in reality I’ve been spending most of my work hours at the dining room table. Nonetheless, as I work towards putting my office back together, I’m trying to figure out how to make it as eco-friendly as possible. Here are some of my ideas:
* Use task lighting only, instead of power-sucking overhead lamps. Also, change out incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescent lights (CFL).
* Make sure the ceiling fan in my office is spinning the right way to lower my heating/cooling bills. FYI, it would be clockwise in the winter to push down warm air and counter-clockwise in the summer to lift up warm air.
* Continue to recycle used printer and copier cartridges by taking advantage of the manufacturer’s free recycling program. For example, whenever I buy a new toner cartridge for my HP LaserJet, the box from the store includes packaging I can use to send the used cartridge back to HP for recycling.
* Always print on both sides of paper before tossing it in the recycling bin or shredding it. (Note to cat owners: you can use shredded paper as a free replacement for cat litter.)
* Instead of tossing my old magazines in the recycling bin, I’m going to see if any local doctor’s offices might like them for waiting-room reading, or if local schools could use them for projects.
* Keep all of my electronics plugged into a single power strip that I can turn off at night.
* When I need to ship something, use the USPS’s Click-N-Ship service via the USPS website, which allows me to print out mailing labels and postage, and I can put the packages out with my regular mail. This saves me from taking extra drives to the post office.
* In a perfect world I would have an all-in-one machine that acted as my laser printer, copier and fax machine. I’m sure one machine would use a lot less energy than the three machines I currently use. But I’ve only seen all-in-ones with ink jet printing. As an author, who prints hundreds of manuscript pages at a time, an ink jet just isn’t up to the job.
As I look around my office (yes, I’m sitting in it for a change), I’m drawing a blank on other green things I could do in here.
What would you suggest I add to my eco to do list for the home office?
READ LEAH ON HOME GOES STRONG
Your ideas have positive side effects, too. Task-specific lighting can minimize headaches. The ceiling fan can improve comfort while saving money. paper is cheap, or seems so, but printing on both sides really adds up. do you save toner and ink by printing drafts in fastdraft or low quality? That makes a big difference to me.
Buy recycled office products. Perhaps make to do list on the computer instead of jotting them down on paper, saves paper and creates less waste. I also cut up used paper that has space left on it and keep at my side in case I do need to write a quick message, reminder, or phone #.
Daisy: Yes, I always print in draft mode. I do the same when making copies. This really makes the toner last longer.
Lindsay: I’ve got those pieces of cut-up paper near my phone in my house. Also, growing up that was the only notepaper I was allowed to use. (My mom was and still is a big reuser of nearly everything.)
Here’s something else I do in my home office (where I am today, since I finally cleaned off my desk. Yeah!): make sure the shades and shutters are wide open on sunny days, so I get natural light in here and it warms the place up, now that it’s cool enough to have to turn on the heat.
My husband works at HP and he’s been working on an all-in-one device like you mentioned…watch your office stores sometime in the near future!
Thanks for your great blog!
Frugalmom:
I’d love to email your hubby with a question about increasing my LaserJet’s longevity. Would you mind emailing me your email address? I checked on your blog and didn’t find one. Thanks.
One easy green for a home office is switching to online faxing to save paper and energy. To support this, my company, CallWave, is offering to have a tree planted on behalf of all of our new Virtual Fax customers through the end of the year. Here’s info on that: http://www.callwave.com/landing/other/plantATreeProgram.aspx
On top of getting rid of energy consuming office hardware, it’s nice to see CallWave pushing a reforestation campaign.
I wish more companies would follow suit.
I just found your blog, has been a great read! Just thought it may interest you to know, a while back i managed to find a british labels company who printed me some mailing labels for a really low price. If interested then it may be worth taking a look at their website.