Below are other ideas for addressing the other two aspects of sustainability’s Triple Bottom Line. As mentioned above, it is not expected that the organization undertake all these practices but rather to prioritize among them, select those that will have the greatest impact and add the most value, and then over time, perhaps address others.

(1) Economic success: the wise use of financial resources

Check all that currently apply or interest you.

(a) Organization’s Economic Prosperity
• Business Improvement. Develop and implement strategies and tactics to strengthen the business over the short and long terms.

(b) Community’s Economic Prosperity

• Donations. Donate money and/or time to charitable or economic development activities that strengthen the community.
• Voluntary Deductions. Create the opportunity for, but do not coerce, voluntary automatic deductions from employee compensation for donations to social and environmental causes of the employee’s choice.
• Local Contractors. Use local contractors, if available, for needed services.
• Fairtrade Items. Buy fairtrade coffee and/or other “fairtrade” products for use by the organization.

(2) Social responsibility: respect for people

(a) Respect for Employees
• Employee Feedback. Conduct regular employee meetings and/or use other techniques (surveys, focus groups, etc.) by which employees can provide constructive feedback to management; communicate management’s response.
• Training & Development. Encourage and support ongoing skills development and training for employees.
• Performance Reviews. Provide all employees regular performance reviews and personal development plans.
• Mentoring. Establish a program under which experienced employees mentor new employees and interns.
• Manager Training. Provide training for new managers on how to supervise and coach other employees
• Compensation. Provide employees with competitive compensation and benefits
• Ergonomics, Safety Training. Assure employees have ergonomically appropriate equipment, furniture, and workstations (including lighting), and the training to do their jobs safely.
• Electrical Safety. Periodically assess the office for compliance with good electrical safety practices, and correct any problems noted.
• Travel Safety. Provide training on safety related to travel, as relevant (e.g., responding to hotel fires, avoiding street crime, safety in airplanes, food safety, obtaining medical care).
• Back Safety. Provide back-safety training for employees who often lift boxes of records or other heavy items.
• Exits. Periodically check exits to assure they are not blocked or locked so as to prevent emergency egress, and are properly marked if visitors may be confused about their location.
• Emergencies. Establish emergency response procedures that cover fires, explosions, workplace violence and other hazards, and that include evacuation procedures and contacting emergency response authorities. Have the entire staff conduct a drill annually and evaluate the results.
• Harmful Substances. Have the offices evaluated for the presence of the following, and, if present in potentially harmful quantities, manage them appropriately to prevent harmful exposures:

- Friable asbestos
- Harmful mold
- Radon
- Lead paint (for older properties)

• Indoor Air Pollution. Assure that office air is otherwise safe and comfortable.
• Employee Records. Establish procedures for maintaining the privacy of employee records.
• Work-Life. Adopt measures to help assure the proper work-life balance of employees, including as appropriate, the following:
• Child care benefits
• Early or late work hours to avoid traffic congestion
• Telecommuting, where practicable
• Sabbatical program
• Retention of temporary help during times of heavy workloads
• Maternity and paternity leave policy
• Opportunities for part-time work and job-sharing
• Clear communication of work priorities and deadlines to subordinates
• Competitive (and mandatory) vacation policy
• Policy on overtime for hourly workers

(b) Diversity, Fair Hiring Practices

• Diversity. Include diversity as important criteria in the hiring of employees, as well as suppliers, consultants, and other retained firms.

(c) Responsible Governance

• Ethics Training. Provide initial and regular refresher training to employees on the relevant ethics and disciplinary rules, and establish a policy making adherence to legal and ethical standards a condition of employment.

(d) Dealing With Customers

• Customer Privacy. Assure employees are aware of the rules on customer privacy and confidentiality of information.
• Customer Satisfaction. Institute periodic surveys or other regular measures to collect feedback on customer satisfaction with products and services; respond as appropriate.
• Business Promotion; Green Claims. Assure that the advertising and promotional practices of the organization conform to the Better Business Bureau’s Code of Advertising and Code of Online Business Practices. See http://us.bbb.org/ . Assure that any green promotional communications are clear, transparent and balanced, and that green claims about products or services are specific, accurate, and verifiable.

(e) Awareness and Advice

• Sustainability Awareness. Use training sessions or other techniques to raise awareness of employees about the sustainability policy and the sustainability issues in your business.

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A. What is Sustainability?

“Green” is a common expression that originally referred to those products, actions or organizations that were thought to be environmentally superior. In recent years, more people have begun to associate the term with sustainable development or sustainability. Sustainable development carries many definitions, the most common of which was articulated by the UN’s Brundtland Commission in 1987: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. ”

From the perspective of organizations, the goal of sustainable development –often referred to in the shorthand as sustainability –entails meeting the “Triple Bottom Line” of economic, social and environmental responsibility. It is about fostering respect for people and other living things while at the same time wisely using and managing environmental and economic resources. It calls for a careful balancing that takes into account the interests of key stakeholders—employees, customers, suppliers, investors, governments, and others—the very parties whose support is critical to the success of any organization.

Over the last few years, many businesses, cities, non-governmental organizations, and academic institutions have realized they have a role to play in the march toward sustainability. Certainly commercial businesses have an important role, too.

B. General Guidance on Implementing a Sustainability Program

(1) Use Guidance: Prioritize.
If your organization desires to pursue sustainability, it should do so in a practical way– in a way that is most suitable to its resources, location, structure, culture, and nature of operations, and service. The approach should be one that adds the most value to the organization. The checklists and other guidance above and below can provide ideas on how that might be done. It is not expected that the organization adopt all of these practices; indeed, there may be other practices that are as effective for the organization, if not more so, than those listed. Also, given the breadth of sustainability, it is advised that you prioritize and pace your efforts toward implementation over the course of years. Take a few short steps, gain some success, and then move on to others.

(2) Systematic Approach.
A simple management system approach, though not essential, may prove helpful in pursuing sustainability. This entails a sequential process of planning, implementing the plan, reporting and evaluating performance, adjusting the approach, and periodically repeating these steps for continual improvement. Here are some more specific steps that may be worth considering, too:

• Secure Buy-in: Discuss with employees what you are trying to accomplish by adopting this sustainability initiative and why you think the organization should do it; secure employee buy-in.
• Adopt and Post Policy: Adopt, sign and post a sustainability policy in one or more prominent places in your office area. This will inform everyone about your purpose and objectives. For ideas about the content of such a document, see the two model policies in Appendices 3 and 4.
•  Appoint Coordinator: Identify a person from the organization as a sustainability coordinator to oversee your implementation of the policy, and track and report progress.
• Assess Status: Use the checklists and other recommendations of this Guide to assess the current status of sustainability of your organization.
•  Create Plan with Goals: Establish a plan for implementing the sustainability policy in a way that makes sense for the organization. One way to do this is to have teams propose a few objectives, metrics, and goals, and then the organization’s leaders can select the priorities and spread them across a number of years so that progress is steady but not overwhelming.
• Identify Implementation Leaders: Assign people within the organization to lead the implementation of each key objective or goal. A supporting sustainability team may also be useful for implementing some items.
• Evaluate Performance: After a period of implementation—say, one year– commence an annual evaluation of progress and challenges.
• Report Progress: Periodically communicate the organization’s progress in implementing the policy. Do this internally first, then publicly. This is most credibly done when noteworthy achievements and best practices are conveyed along with a description of challenges and plans for further improvement. A public report may take the form of a brochure or other publication for customers. It may also entail posting a simple progress report on the website of your organization. Guidance on public sustainability reporting and ideas for performance measurements may be found at the Global Reporting Initiative website: http://www.globalreporting.org/
• Recognize Achievements: Celebrate success; recognize exceptional performance; have some fun.
• Adjust and Repeat Process: Adjust the objectives as appropriate, and repeat the process for continual improvement. Eventually meld the process into the organization’s regular business planning. Make this part of the organization’s culture.
• Tell Others: Share your experience with others outside the organization (customers, new recruits, other organizations, communities, media, etc.); inspire others to undertake a similar commitment.

This is part IV of our series of green guides. Here is Part I, Reduce Carbon Footprint, Part II, Greening Office Product Line, and part III, Improve Environmental Impact in Business Operations.

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Below are some environmental practices that you may want to consider, in order to reduce the environmental impact of your daily operataions. This is part III of our series of green guides. Here is Part I, Reduce Carbon Footprint, and Part II, Greening Office Product Line.

A. Resource Conservation and Pollution Prevention

(Check all that currently apply or interests you)

• Drinking Water. Use filtered tap water instead of bottled water. It takes approximately 17 million barrels of oil to make all the plastic bottles used for the bottled water consumed by Americans each year.
• Reusable Utensils. Use durable plates, cups, glasses, and utensils in the kitchen and conference rooms
• Printer Cartridges. Recycle printer cartridges and buy recycled cartridges.
• Recyclables. Recycle the following to the extent practicable:
  1. Glass bottles
  2. Aluminum cans
  3. Batteries
  4. Plastic bags
  5. Tyvek envelopes
  6. Cardboard
• Reuse Center. Establish a re-use center for binders, file folders, and other items.
• External Reuse. Sell or donate old office equipment, furniture, and supplies that can’t be reused internally.
• Doormats. Use good doormats or entryway track-off systems to prevent people from tracking dirt into the building. Less dirt means fewer resources used for cleaning.
• Grounds Management. Conserve the use of water for grounds watering, where applicable and to the extent that can be decided or influenced by the organization. Use natural landscaping and minimize the use of chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, to the extent lawn maintenance is within the control of the organization.
• LEED Building Features. Adopt “green building” features and practices, such as those encouraged under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program of the US Green Building Council, to the extent that can be decided or influenced by the organization. See http://www.usgbc.org/ . Every day, over $464 million worth of construction projects are registered with LEED.

B. Reducing Supply Chain Impacts

• Orders and Deliveries. Use supplier e-systems to order and pay for products and services. Consolidate multiple sources and deliveries of products and services to reduce environmental impacts.
• Product Recycling, Take-back Programs. Arrange with product manufacturers, the Link 360 Program ( http://www.link360recycling.com/ ) , E-Cycle Environmental (http://www.ecycleenvironmental.com/ ) or other reputable firms to take back customer products after use.
• Caterers. Use caterers that minimize disposables.
• Inks. Specify the use of soy inks and paper with recycled content for all print jobs
• Landlord. If the office is leased, work with the landlord and office building manager to help minimize the adverse environmental impacts and risks of the operations and maximize the beneficial ones.
• Facility Improvements. Incorporate environmental criteria in the design and construction of office and other facility improvements.
• Green Hotels. Select hotels with “green” practices for conference sites or regular use. See the CERES Green Hotel Initiative for best practice checklists and other tools: http://www.ceres.org/ then search for hotel.

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We have seen recently more and more efforts towards more eco-friendly and sustainable products. Sustainable products are these products that provide environmental, social and economic benefits while protecting public health, welfare, and environment over their full commercial cycle, from the extraction of raw materials to final disposition.

The company Hacoa brings this notion full circle with a collection of elegant wooden office products. The collection is quite diversified going from keyboards, to paper clip holder and even USB flash drives, and all products have a nice Zen feel to them. Enjoy

Paper Clips holder

Apple Keyboard Stand

Keyboard

Usb Flash Drive

Mouse Pad

Stapler

The only fear I have about using these products is the amount of splitters you might get, especially while typing on the keyboard.

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This is part II of our 5 part Guide to Green Office. This guide contains ways of measuring  your environmental impacts as well as a checklist for things one could do in terms of greening one’s product line.

A. Measuring the Environmental Impact of Switching to Green Products

(1) Recycled paper products.

• To determine the environmental impacts of various types of paper in terms of energy used, greenhouse gases and other air pollutants emitted, waste water volume and pollutants discharged, and solid waste generated, enter the appropriate data in the Environmental Defense Paper Calculator: http://www.environmentaldefense.org/papercalculator/. This website provides charts and graphs showing the impacts of different types of paper (freesheet, groundwood, corrugated, and paperboard, etc.) with different recycled contents.
• Comparisons:

•  A pallet of copier paper (20-lb. sheet weight or 20#) contains 40 cartons at 50 pounds each and weighs one ton (2000 lbs). Each ton of such virgin paper (no post-consumer content) uses 24 trees.
• One carton (10 reams) of virgin copier paper uses 0.6 trees.
• One tree makes 16 2/3 reams of copy paper, or 8333 sheets.
  Source: Conservatree http://www.conservatree.com/learn/EnviroIssues/TreeStats.shtml .

(2) Computer notebooks, desktops and monitors.

• See the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT): http://www.epeat.net/FastBenefits.aspx

B. Increasing Your Use of Green Products

Using green products in your own operations (Check all that currently apply or interest you).

• Paper and plastic products with significant quantities of post-consumer recycled content
• Re-manufactured products (e.g., ink and laser toner cartridges)
• Electrical products that are solar powered (e.g., calculators) or certified as energy efficient by Energy Star
• Compact fluorescent light bulbs and other energy efficient lighting
• Products that are reusable, rewritable, refillable, rechargeable, more durable or repairable
• Products that are recyclable
• Cleaners and solvents that are nontoxic; non-VOC (volatile organic compound); biodegradable; water-based; ammonia-, phosphate-, and chlorine free; and derived from renewable resources rather than petroleum
• Detergents, cleaners and other liquids in concentrate, which minimizes packaging
• Writing instruments with non-toxic inks or other marking fluids
• Furniture, carpets, and paints that do not emit harmful levels of VOCs from adhesives or finishes
• Products made from plant-based materials
• Compostable items, such as garbage and grocery bags
• Multi-purpose electronic equipment (e.g., combination printer-scanner-fax machine)
• Bins for collecting recyclable materials
• Power strips and other devices that enable you to manually or automatically cut power when not needed
• Products certified by reputable third parties as being environmentally superior in specific ways, such as those noted above (See the Green Glossary for a listing of some popular certifications.)

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