Making offices more environmentally friendly Published July 16, 2008 By Elizabeth Toftemark 375th Civil Engineering Squadron SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. -- Every day people make choices, some small and seemingly insignificant and some large and unquestionably substantial. Small or large, the collective choices and the actions that stem from them have an impact - good, bad or indifferent - on the world. Everyone is responsible for the health and sustainability of the natural world. The natural world is relied on for subsistence and survival and is revered for its power and beauty, yet it is declining due to idle guardianship. Protecting the small and large environments where people live is not only sensible, it is essential. Everyone needs to put more thought into what they do if they want to avoid a lifestyle of one mistake after another, and that means knowing and thinking about the consequences of the chores, routines, habits and activities that fill our days. Greener living will require examining and modifying some long-standing living patterns in order to refrain from or curtail activities that are needlessly harmful to the environment, and to replace bad behaviors with better ones. Many changes can be made in everyday living that may seem unimportant, but will make a difference if everyone does it. For example, if just two percent of the U.S. population turned on the kitchen and bathroom faucets to a fraction of full blast when washing their hands, nearly 12 million gallons of water could be saved every day. Listed below are ways to make an impact at the office: 1. Employers can implement compress work weeks by working four 10-hour days or allowing employees to work from home to reduce toxic automobile emissions. 2. Consider buying a laptop over a desktop computer. Laptops use half of the energy that desktops use plugged in and one percent of the energy when running on batteries. 3. Place electronics on sleep or stand-by mode when not in use. 4. Make two-sided copies when making copies. 5. Use the back of old papers for notes. 6. Avoid using an extra page for a cover sheet when faxing. 7. Save work onto disks or a hard drive instead of printing work. 8. Use actual dishes and cups rather than disposable ones. 9. Turn of lights of unoccupied rooms and turn off lights if going to be out of the room for more than 10 minutes. 10. Distribute documents via e-mail instead of hard copies when possible. 11. Recycle empty printer, copier and fax cartridges. 12. Use suppliers that will take back their hazardous, recyclable or reusable products at the end of their life for proper disposal, recycling or remanufacturing.