Just How Green are We?

Our company is trying to go green. No big news there really. There’s a big push nowadays for companies and individuals to try and lessen their carbon footprint and work on the new Three R’s, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. In some aspects we’re actually succeeding in being a little more environmentally conscious. After all, we’re supposed to have massively reduced the number of business trips we make (and being an international company that’s a big cut), we’re cutting down on the number of printouts we make, and we’re actually starting to recycle more within the office. It’s a nice touch, really, it is. But a closer look tells me we’re not as green as we’d like to think we are…

Water Usage

We’ve got that latest and greatest in the restrooms when it comes to combining technology and the restroom. Low flush toilets are great, especially when combined with motion activated flushing. It’s green and sanitary too. But then there’s the sinks. Sure, they’re also motion activated, so you’d think they wouldn’t waste water. Well… Sorta… Instead of just turning on when you put your hands under the faucet and turning off when you’re done these sinks are on motion activated timers. Stick your hands underneath to turn it on. You get a ten second burst of water. It’s not enough to was and rinse in one cycle, so you’ve got to move your hands out of the sink and put them back in. Of course, now you’ve only taken four seconds to finish rinsing your hands, that leaves the water still running until you make it over to the paper towels, wasting six seconds of water while you’re at it. Better still is that some of the toilets and sinks are not set up very well, so just walking by turns them on. Nice going guys. The amount of water you waste on all the floors of the building all day could probably water my lawn at home.

Coffee Waste

What office doesn’t have coffee? I don’t know of one unless you count any non-profit, anti-caffiene organizations out there, but do they really count? Seriously though, coffee is an office staple. Coffee can even be a relatively green coffee staple if you think about it. All you need are a few employees who are willing to take the used grounds (and even coffee filters) home to compost or spread around their rose gardens. That’s a lot of coffee grounds which are now out of the land fill and biodegrading naturally while they help beautify their surroundings. That only works well though if you have a traditional coffee maker. To make the employees happy we ended up losing our regular coffee makers and they have all been replaced with Flavia machines. Sure, the flavor options are nice, but what about how it’s all made? Individual coffee packets, that’s how. Individual packets that are wrapped in plastic and will end up sitting in a landfill for the next millennia. Of course, some of the fancier drinks take more than one flavor packet too, so that just adds to the mess. The used coffee and tea isn’t even separated out at the end of the brew cycle to even give the option for employees to use the grounds for other uses.