Easy Steps For A Greener Home Office

Easy steps for a greener home office



(NC)—Whether your home office is your 9-to-5 work space or a homework hub, it is likely housing a collection of batteries, empty printer cartridges and the like. In addition to these cluttering items, home offices also generate paper and electricity waste — often unnecessarily.

Recent data shows that more than four out of five Canadian households (82%) have used, broken or outdated office items such as phones, PDAs, inkjet and toner cartridges and rechargeable batteries — items that are probably headed for the garbage instead of being recycled or properly disposed of.

Chris Winter, Executive Director of the Conservation Council of Ontario urges people to think twice before tossing home office waste in the trash.

"If we each change our individual habits a little bit, together we can make a big difference in the health of our environment," said Winter

Winter urges Canadians to take advantage of municipal household hazardous waste programs to properly dispose of items such as toner cartridges and cell phones, or bring them to in recycling drop offs like those found in all STAPLES Business Depot stores in Canada.

In addition to properly disposing office waste, here are other tips to work towards a greener home office

• Plug your office equipment (computer, monitor, speakers, printer, scanner, etc.) into a power bar that can be turned off when not in use (a computer running 24 hours a day can use up to $120 worth of electricity every year!);

• Use natural cooling techniques in the summer, such as shades and fans, instead of air-conditioning;

• Use recycled and unbleached paper products; look for high percentages of Post-Consumer Content;

• Send electronic copies of documents instead of hard copies whenever possible and only print double sided documents;

• Choose reuseable and refillable products instead of disposables (i.e. rechargeable batteries and refillable toner cartridges)

- News Canada