10 Tips To Help You Create An Eco-Friendly Home Office

Hoping to make your home office more eco-friendly? Try these 10 tips to lessen your negative impact on the planet whilst you work.

Hey you, high five! By working from home you are already lessening your impact on the planet. You don’t commute, you don’t use office space, you even ditched the single use coffee cups you used to get your morning brew in on the way to work. You’re already an eco-hero!

However, there’s more to do yet if you would love to keep things sustainable in your home working space too. Want to know how? Checkout these 10 tips to help you create an eco-friendly home office:

1. Make The Most Of Natural Light
   
   Open the curtains! It’s all too tempting to keep them closed so the nosey neighbours walking past aren’t getting an intimate look into your life, but by making the most of the natural light during the day, you aren’t wasting energy on lighting.

2. Choose Non-Toxic Paint
   
   Non-toxic paints are now widely available. When using toxic paints, every time you wash your brush or roller, you’re putting harmful chemicals down the sink that can pollute waterways and be poisonous to marine life. It doesn’t sound like a lot but if everyone switched to non-toxic paints it would make a huge difference.

3. Go Paperless
   
   For most people, almost everything can be done online without the need for wasting reams and reams of paper. Eliminating the printer from your office wherever possible can not only cut costs but also cut energy consumption.
   
   If you have paperwork you need to keep, you can always use inexpensive self storage for safely storing away a copy.
   
   
4. Buy High-Quality Furniture
   
   As tempting as it is to buy the cheapest office furniture you can find, it’s a false economy. Once that cheap desk becomes a wobbly mess and your chair has fallen apart after giving you chronic back pain, the savings become non-existent because you have to rebuy it all. Not just that, all the cheap furniture will just end up in landfill once you’re done with it.

5. Be More Energy Efficient Overall
   
   Remember when you were younger and your dad followed you around the house turning lights off? You need to channel that energy and save some….well, energy.
   Become the old man in your house – constantly check the heating level, tell everyone to put another layer on, turn lights off, turn unused appliances off or unplug them from the wall.
   
   Anything you can do to save yourself some energy is not only yet another cost saving, but makes your home office that little bit more sustainable.
   
   Also reassess your decision to use high-energy appliances. For example, can you avoid using standalone heaters/air conditioning units?

6. Use Eco-Friendly Cleaning Solutions
   
   Most cleaning products are concoctions of god-knows-what. Well actually, we do know and the vast majority of them are not great. Using eco-friendly products further reduces the harmful chemicals going down your sink hole.
   
   
7. Try To Reuse Items That Could Have A Second Life
   
   Reusing items is a great way to give random objects a second life. As a society we’re all too used to just throwing stuff away without actually thinking if what we’re putting in the bin is useful and could be useful in another capacity.
   
   You know the 3 ‘R’s – Reduce, reuse and…..

8. Recycle Any Waste That’s Recyclable
   
   ……yes, recycle. The 3rd ‘R’ here is critical. It’s actually shocking how much you can reduce your rubbish output once you start recycling properly. It’s pretty satisfying when you get into it as well.
   
   Tip: Most soft plastics aren’t actually recyclable at the curb in a lot of cases, but you CAN usually take them to your local supermarket who will have a dedicated bin for them.

9. Avoid Non-Recyclable Coffee Cartridges In Your Machine
   
   Did you know that a lot of coffee cartridges are made of plastic? A lot of these just end up in landfill. Instead opt for a more recyclable option such as aluminium. Don’t forget to rinse them out first.
   
   Even better, look for a reusable coffee pod that you can use with your machine. That way you massively reduce the impact of your morning brew!
   
   This won’t be popular but if you can, avoid coffee altogether. It has an incredibly high environmental impact to produce.
   
   The true cost of coffee.

10. Try Meat-Free Monday
    
    Farmers will argue this point all day, but there’s no escaping the fact that meat production also has one of the highest environmental impacts. Especially red meat.
    
    Dropping meat from your diet just one day a week will make a difference. Even better if you can drop it altogether.

Hopefully, you’re feeling more inspired than ever to create a green office space to work in. Your career, your health and the planet can only benefit from your efforts.