5 Efficient Ways to Save On Your Office’s Energy Costs

Costs for energy continue to rise and natural resources continue to diminish. Recycling can certainly help reduce humanity’s strain on resources, but there is another way to keep costs down and protect resources. This is conservation, which can be considered the step you take before recycling. The less you use, the less you will need to recycle.

1. Lighting

One of the most important areas you should conserve at the office is lighting. Saving light will have both economic and environmental benefits. Saving on lighting can save thousands of dollars a year; add in the conservation of paper and that will increase the savings even more.

 Some of the most obvious and easiest ways to conserve energy include:

• use lower-wattage bulbs;
• replace incandescent or fluorescent bulbs with LED bulbs;
• turn off any lights when not in use;
• keep fixtures and bulbs clean;
• use natural light when possible; and
• use task lighting.

Occupancy sensors can help reduce energy use. When rooms are unoccupied, lights will remain off. When people enter the room, the lights will turn on automatically and off again when they leave. In office spaces, lighting makes up 40 percent of all energy used.

2. Water

When it comes to water, the first way to avoid waste is to never let it down the drain when there is another use. Water a plant in the house or in the garden. Use it to clean. Flush a toilet with it or soak some dishes. When washing dishes, fill the sink and let the dishes soak; don’t constantly run water while you wash.

3. Heating and Cooling

Some ways to conserve on heating and cooling bills includes using fans and natural ventilation for cooling needs. Use window shades and in offices, place work stations away from direct sunlight. In the winter, set the thermostat at 20C (68 F) and in the summer, set it to 25.5C (78F). Heating and cooling makes up half of the costs for all the energy used in office buildings.

4. Electricity

Another way to save a lot of money, particularly in offices, is to conserve electricity. The easiest way to do this is to turn off all computers. If you can’t do it every night, make sure to do it on weekends. When new computers are in the budget, buy newer, energy-efficient machines that use less energy. An office with 30 employees, each of whom turns off his or her computer every night, will save around $3,000 a year in energy costs.

5. Recycling

When it comes to recycling paper and containers, make sure that there is no other use for them first. Use the back of unneeded documents as draft or note paper. Use the duplex feature on photocopiers and printers, making copies on the front and back sides of each page.

Use designated bins to recycle cans, cardboard, and paper, and don’t contaminate those with trash. When it comes to recycle bins, a new study out of the University of British Columbia shows that placing recycling and compost bins within 1.5 metres of a door will dramatically increase the chances of the tenant recycling and composting.

In fact, those rates go up by 141 percent! If you want to increase the amount you recycle or compost, move the bins closer. In an office setting, place recycling bins in the kitchen and lunch rooms, near the photocopier/printer, and make sure each employee has close access to a paper recycle bin at his or her desk that can be used to collect waste paper through the week and can be emptied into a larger recycling bin when full.