23rd Jul 2021
How to Create a Sustainable Office: 5 Tips for an Eco-Friendly Office Refresh
In the current climate, it’s becoming increasingly important to adapt to a ‘greener’ way of life. Here at Blueprint Interiors, it’s no different.
In our WorkLife Central office, we aim to make better choices every day and keep the environment in mind in all our processes and projects. If you’re thinking about updating, relocating, or just shaking up your office a little bit, sustainability should definitely be high on your priority list. With that in mind, here are our top tips for a sustainable office refresh:
1. Encourage Natural Light
Depending on your office situation, location, and time of year, this tip may be more or less applicable for you. But by encouraging more natural light into your office, you can massively cut down your electricity usage by reducing the need for interior lighting.
Not only is this beneficial for your carbon footprint and electricity bill, but the increased Vitamin D can promote better health in your workforce. A 2018 survey also found that access to natural light was the number one workplace perk that individuals looked for in their office environment.
What’s more, natural light is the best friend of another major office mood-booster – plants!
2. Tech-Enable Your Workplace
When you think of sustainability, technology might not be the first thing that you think of. But by embracing workplace tech, you can solve many corporate sustainability headaches.
First of all, by swapping paper for tablets, you can embrace paperless technology such as mobile document scanning/sharing, digital note-taking and e-signing software. Now you can progress your day-to-day work without printing a single sheet of paper.
Another way to embrace tech is by kitting out your meeting rooms. For example, bring a wide-angle, HD webcam and screen into your meeting space to enable high-quality video calls and reduce unnecessary travel.
3. Use Sustainable office Furniture, and Use Furniture Sustainably
Sustainable furniture has come leaps and bounds in the past few years. More and more companies are developing sustainable lines, so it’s easier than ever before to choose eco-friendly furniture for your office. For example, this ‘Think’ office chair from Steelcase (which can be seen in WorkLife Central) is made of up to 28% recycled content by weight and is 95% recyclable at end-of-life.
Even if your furniture isn’t necessarily sustainable, you can still make the most out of it by making sustainable choices. Around 1.2 million office desks and 1.8 million office chairs end up in UK landfills each year. Just because a desk, chair, or monitor is of no use to you anymore, that doesn’t mean it should be thrown away. Instead, why not donate your old equipment/furniture to charities or schools? Or even sell them on to give them a second life?
4. Embrace Hybrid Working
Being sustainable in your everyday working life is all well and good, but if you’re refreshing/remodelling your office every few years, it’s likely that you’re offsetting a large portion of your good efforts.
Whenever you go through a remodel or redesign, you’re probably throwing out screens, desks, partitions and furniture. The solution could be to create a ‘hybrid’ working environment to improve the longevity of your office space.
Hybrid workspaces are designed to take into account different styles of working. They provide a modular workspace that adapts and changes with the needs and wants of your workforce. Ensure that your team get everything they need from their workplace for the foreseeable future, and you may even prevent issues such as employee burnout.
5. Talk to a Sustainable Office Fit-Out Company
There are lots of steps to get right when it comes to reducing your office’s carbon footprint. Of course, any effort is good in itself, but to create a truly sustainable, well-designed office space, it’s best to speak to the professionals.
At Blueprint Interiors, we were recently awarded the WELL Health-Safety Rating. We’re the first in our region, and the first in our sector to achieve this, and it’s something we’re incredibly proud of.
The best thing about this is that we’re able to share our experience on things like material sustainability, natural lighting, and sustainable water usage with you!
If you’re looking to transform your workplace into a more sustainable, efficient and agile environment, get in touch with us today.