Environmental Choices That Should Save Money for Your Office

(Updated 11/18/20) You may or may not have ever thought about what your company could do to save the environment, but I bet that you’ve thought a lot about how your company can cut costs.  The Florida Green Building Coalition has a list of simple actions that a company can take to save energy and water and just be a little greener in general.  Here are the 7 highlights from the Florida Green Building Coalition's list:

1. Get Educated – designate a staff member to do research or subscribe to a newsletter.
   
2. Make a Visible Commitment – create a mission statement about green practices and post it for your staff and on your website.
3. Initiate a Recycling Program – place boxes to collect paper goods and find a place to donate your furniture and other reusable materials.
4. Choose Office Supplies Wisely – look for environmentally friendly office supplies and choose to buy them when available.
5. Incorporate Green Practices – always print 2-sided, use electronic storage whenever possible, turn off lights when leaving a room, replace paper and foam cups with real plates and cups.
6. Upgrade to Green Products - Replace light and water fixtures with more efficient styles and install a programmable thermostat
7. Turn off All Office Equipment at the end of the day and on weekends

These are all excellent tips if you’re looking to get your sustainability program started. 

One of the tips that I’d like to discuss further based on our own experience is making green upgrades to a building.  Wolgast Development has been installing automated building controls to more efficiently control our environment and access all office systems from one central location.  Additionally, they’ve installed timed light sensors throughout the building, so that lights automatically turn on only when they’re being used and timeout when they aren’t.  Furthermore, Wolgast Corporation has been using electronic filing systems over the past few years and has saved significantly on space in our storage warehouse by eliminating the need for storing boxes of documents.  And, for the most part, it’s all at our fingertips if we need it rather than going to the warehouse to find what we need.  What did we do with all that paper? We recycled it and continue to do so when necessary.

Wolgast Corporation would also like to announce that we’re a Certified Energy Star Partner and we have three LEED APs on staff.  They can serve all of your sustainable building project needs.  Please contact us if you need help or have questions about any of the items discussed in this blog.