Just How Green are We?
by My company has recently made a big push to say that they’re trying to be more environmentally friendly. The funny thing is, when I look around, I see too many things that counteract all the things we’re trying to do.
Reduce Your Paper Usage
We don’t print as much as we used to, and that’s a good thing. But what about those paper cups we’ve been asked to cut down on? Remember the Flavia coffee machine I just mentioned? Guess what’s next to it? You guessed it, stacks and stacks of paper coffee cups. Better still is that most people use a new one every time they want more coffee. As if that’s not bad enough, just turn around in the break room and take a gander over at what the company thinks is another nice perk for it’s employees: a popcorn machine (I guess they were tired of complaints of people burning popcorn in the microwave, so now we have a full sized popcorn machine to scorch things). Maybe I’m being a little picky here, but all the popcorn is available to be served in are those little popcorn bags. Once you put greasy popcorn in them, you can’t really recycle them. Granted, I’m not really sure what else you could put the popcorn in (other than those tiny little paper coffee cups) but I still find it humorous that we’re trying to reduce paper usage and yet keep giving us little choice of things to use in the break room other than paper products.
Emissions
Let’s reduce our carbon foot print by reducing the number of times we fly anywhere, and let’s encourage the use of VOIP and video conferencing so that we can still work face to face with our colleagues in other countries. That’s all well and good, but there’s another side to reducing emissions, and that’s not driving. There are still enough member of senior management who want to see their employees in the office on a daily basis with very little exceptions. I know I’m not the only one who drives over 60 miles round trip on a daily basis. If we could be allowed to work from home one day a week, think of the pollution we wouldn’t put into the atmosphere (not to mention what employees would save on gas). Also, by requiring everyone to be in the office every day we’re actually running out of parking spaces, so we’re wasting even more fuel idling around the parking lot for upwards of five minutes on a daily basis just trying to find a spot to park. Plant a tree for me guys, because I’m still circling for a place to park on campus.
Don’t get me wrong, I like that we’re finally trying to go green here, but sometimes I think we’re not thinking things all the way through.
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Post Commentmkjohnson
On August 6, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Great article – I totally agree. My workplace is doing the same kind of things.
Tremell Datoine
On May 5, 2009 at 8:37 am
This is a really interesting article, good work. The think the whole ‘going green’ concept get people’s attention, but I still think there is far to much printing of paper and wasting of water as well.