The office
Green your office
In the office, we plan our next youth projects, organise ideas and interact with each other.
Find out what you can do to make your office a more sustainable place.
Test your knowledge
Best practices
Check out some of our best practices – and find even more in our free to download handbook!
Choose green housing
Energy efficiency, near public transportation. Catch wintersun. Use curtains. Lower heating. Place insulation behind heaters. Use eco-friendly deterrents…
Think alternative working places
Flexible working places save resources. Make it normal that somebody can work on ‘your’ table too.
Invest in furniture with a future
Get, find, buy second hand furniture. Buying new? Make sure it is a certified cradle-to-cradle product.
Make smarter choices
Need a phone? Consider the Fairphone. Before buying new, check second-hand, refurbished electronics. Shut down devices not used daily. Install standby killers.
Refuse/reduce printing
Strive to go digital, use smaller designs, use eco-fonts. Use and reuse recycled paper. Use a multifunctional printer. Share a printer with other organisations.
Find the greenest supplier and move to them
Green banking, insurance, electricity providers, pension funds, telecommunication and web hosting providers? They are also available in green.
Bike to the office
Empower yourself and colleagues to travel by bike and public transportation. Consider ‘company’ bikes, season tickets and/or reduction cards for public transportation.
Water tapped, coffee and tea selected
Quit polluting behaviour like bottled water. Pick your coffee/tea based on sustainability. It matters. Don’t boil more water than needed.
Repair
Invest time in checking & repairing things, treat material with care. Quality control of devices saves costs. Using devices and material mindfully is everyone’s task.
Step out of the rush
Observe the changing landscape, reflect, listen to a podcast or music, read a good book or prepare for the learning encounter ahead. Travel ‘slow’.
Hop on!
Participants from the same country or region could hop on the same bus or train, or organise a car-sharing.
Enjoy
the differences in landscape and culture more through slow travel.
Time for
Finally reading that book!
The bonus
Travel time can be used to get to know each other, and participants can report about their travels on social media. Perhaps they could even do fun tasks together!
Regional partnerships
Why not make a regional project and explore diversity in your surroundings?
Nearby partners
Collaboration with nearby partner countries improves the chance that participants will choose green means of travel to reach the activity venue.
Taking distance into account
When planning a new project can help to avoid long travel for participants in the first place.
What is a green travel policy?
A travel policy that sets standards for green travelling. A great way to reduce your travel emissions on the organisational level.
Ideas for your own travel policy?
Till 600 kilometres distance use grounded transportation (such as buses, ships, shared taxis, shuttles or similar).
The bonus
Travel time can be used to get to know each other, and participants can report about their travels on social media. Perhaps they could even do fun tasks together!
Travel time = Working time.
Consider (a part of ) the time travelled as working time. Discuss which task to complete during the travel.
Hop on!
Participants from the same country or region could hop on the same bus or train, or organise a car-sharing.
Enjoy
the differences in landscape and culture more through slow travel.
Time for
Finally reading that book!
“When we are working in the office, it is common to reuse everything we have here. For example, if we have plastic bowls, we use them in our workshops for planting. We are making compost and it is easy to not waste food. When buying food, we use reusable bags.”
Office self assessment
Need food for thought, material for discussion or concrete steps for action?
Do your self assessment and see where you are now, what you are good at and where there is space to improve.
Create your bucket list
So, what is next for you? Take a look at the list below and pick what you will do next.
Feel free to prioritize your top five actions for your upcoming projects.
Useful links
Practical tools
Printing and beyond: the use of a proper font
- Best eco-friendly fonts for printing
- Best eco-friendly fonts for webpages
Useful websites
- Search engine Ecosia plants trees
- office Carbon calculator (in Dutch only) or check the co2 footprint at Climate Neutral Group.
Green finances, printing and others
- Fair Finance Guide
- Eerlijke Geldwijzer (in Dutch only) or Fair Finance International
- Green banks: one example is Triodos Bank (with branches in the UK, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands)
- Printing
- Eco-Toilet Paper
Further reading
- Ecotips.org (in Dutch only)
- European Environmental Agency: Good habits folder
Download the ECOrasmus handbook
Find many more tips, best practice examples and tools in our handbook! Download it now for free:
