Make Your Business Green

Have you noticed how incredibly inefficient businesses are when it comes to energy? You would think that places that are about the bottom line would try to do everything they could do reduce how much energy they use. Most likely the issue is that when you go to work, you do not have as much ownership over the energy bills or how others use their energy.

I work in a hospital that is incredibly inefficient. I mean, do we really need to run ventilators *all* night long? Of course I'm kidding, but when I walk around the place during my 30 hour work shifts, you notice how much energy is being wasted throughout the place.

It would be great if you could try get a hold of energy bills for your place of employment and then implement simply energy saving principles and follow the energy bills and any difference goes back to employees or something of that nature. I mean the money is just getting wasted.

Most of the time, the changes does not even take asking your boss for some money to change things. Frankly, just shut off the lights when they are not being used. Shut off bathroom lights. Shut off your office lights when you have a window and the sun is shining. Shut off your computer when you leave is a huge thing. Shut off machines not being used in general. I suppose everyone's business is different and uses energy different, but I'm sure you could walk around and find huge drains on energy.

Then there is the stuff that takes a little up-front money but pays for itself over a few years. This will involve either some fancy pie graphs or a great powerpoint with animation and sound to convince your boss to do it.
-Maybe if you business is solid and going to be around, go to LED lights.
-Washing machines at your place? Go frontloaders.
-Encourage natural lighting.
-Discourage formal dress codes so that people can wear what they want and they can adapt
to lowering the temp on the termostat in the winter and raising it a bit in the summer.
-You could go with gray water systems, use low flow toilets, or on-demand water heaters.
-How much paper does your job waste? ...and on stupid memos no less. Use both sides and
send things electronically when you can. That saves both paper, ink and
printer upkeep/replacement. oh and sanity.

Other suggestions??

There is a great podcast about this kind of stuff in on NOW/PBS that just came out. Give a listen.