Maybe because we don’t generally pay the office utility bill, sometimes it’s easy to think that when we get to work, our responsibility to consider our impact stops. But most of us spend at least 37 hours a week at work, and we don’t stop consuming energy and resources or producing carbon while we do.

Speak up and change the office culture
Precisely because of this, our working week is an opportunity to make big reductions in our impact. Take gas and electric. Have you ever walked into your office to find the radiators on and the windows open? Me too. But just one person can change the culture by speaking up and making this unacceptable. Another common one is leaving lights, photocopiers or computers switched on. Setting your PC to ‘sleep’ mode reduces the amount of energy it uses by about 95%, so why not routinely switch to sleep when you go to lunch or a meeting, as well as switching off the end of the day?

And then, the humble office kettle. Has there ever been a harder-working appliance? And yet I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve found a well-meaning colleague boiling a full kettle ‘for the next person’, or emptying a full kettle only to refill it with fresh water – both pointless and wasteful. By all means make a brew for the whole team, but just boil what you need!

Report faulty appliances until they are fixed
And if the kettle is faulty and not functioning efficiently, report it. We can sometimes have an attitude of ‘somebody else will deal with it’ at work, but we all have a responsibility, and can make a big difference. Window jammed open? Tap dripping? Radiator stuck on high? Report it, and keep reporting it until it’s fixed.

Then there’s waste. We throw away a lot of stuff at work. As usual, think reduce, reuse, recycle – in that order. Do you really need to print that whole 17 page report, in colour ink? Could you bring in a reusable cup for your morning latte, instead of throwing away un-recyclable coffee cups every day? Could you pop a compost caddy in your work kitchen to collect all the used tea bags and banana skins, or encourage everyone to batch print rather than firing up the printer for just one page?

Most measures will result in cost savings
You can also make a difference by making some noise with your bosses; maybe you could lobby your employer to provide glass and plastic recycling facilities? Could they create a central register of unused office furniture, to avoid buying new? Employers should be receptive to these kinds of suggestions, as most measures will result in cost savings for the company as well. A good company should have a sustainability plan, which you can use to frame your ideas. Depending on your business, a single employee can make enormous differences in a company’s carbon footprint – just take a look around you, think about where the waste is in your business, and use your imagination.