September 10, 2019

Simple and sweet solutions for a greener office

When stuck in a seemingly overwhelming situation, without a doubt, someone has said to you, ‘how do you eat an elephant?’ And then you were probably humbled and grounded by the thought. That one bite at a time philosophy doesn’t just have to apply to eating elephants! The same thought process can be applied to sustainability efforts. There are definitely small steps we can make that, when put together, can have a huge, elephant sized and positive environmental impact.

Have you ever thought about how much you print in the office? Do you think about the paper or the toner cartridges used?

Each year, more than 350 million ink and toner cartridges are thrown out and they can take up to a millennium to decompose, not to mention all the toxic components inside the cartridge. To create, each cartridge requires almost a gallon of oil and the manufacturing process releases 4.8 KGs of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Surely, we can do better!

In keeping with our philosophy of being an environmentally conscious company, Emterra Group has implemented a company wide initiative to reduce our reliance on toner cartridges. By changing our font and print options we are saving money, reducing the amount of ink, paper and the number of ink cartridges destined for the landfill.

Here are a few things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint in the office, too.

 

• Change the colour of your font from black to 80 per cent.
• Change your email font to ‘Century Gothic,’ size 10. It’s still easy to read and uses less toner to print.
• Change your document margins from the default of 2.54 to 1.27 cm for Top and Bottom and 2.00 cm for Left and Right margins – this will help reduce the number of pages you use.
• Change the default line spacing from 'Multiple 1.15' to 'Single.' This will use less paper.
• When printing use the 'Draft' option to print. This will reduce the amount of ink used.
• Print all your documents 'Double-sided.' This will significantly reduce the amount of paper used.

Alternatives to using traditional paper

Emterra Environmental, Surrey, BC division have taken on a new sustainability first initiative with their paper. The office has partnered with local printing company, Royal Printers to switch their entire paper and stationary supply to Sugar Sheet. Sugar Sheet is made from 100 per cent sugar cane waste and is 100 per cent forest free! This sustainable solution is also cost effective because Royal Printer’s Sugar Sheet is priced the same as what we were paying through other larger suppliers for paper made of trees.

Through the Sugar Sheet initiative and in a 12 month period, we have saved 82 trees and 3,723 KGs of CO2!

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