Welcome to the 20th weekly installment of 50 Ways to Reduce Your Waste Line! This series cycles through 10 topics, providing successively “deeper shades of green” suggestions as we move through each of five levels. Last week, we were at the topic of Being for Level 2 and we asked you to report any heating and cooling excesses and water wastage to the Facilities Management department. This week, we are returning to the final topic for Level 2.
“Knowing” is about ways to use information to reduce your ecological footprint. The first-level suggestion for Knowing (week 10) described what goes in each of the Zero Waste bins. This second-level suggestion encourages you to keep stuff out of the bins altogether by sharing it with your work colleagues to use or repurpose.
The basic idea is to look around your office areas with an eye to identifying things that are not being used, either not at all or not fully, and sharing knowledge of these items with your coworkers. If someone else can use an item more fully—or perhaps even for an altogether different purpose than intended—it gets better value for the embedded carbon footprint that was created when that object was made. And it may mean it is being used instead of a new item (and its associated environmental costs like packaging and delivery) being purchased.
Embedded carbon footprint (ECF) refers to the “range of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of a product”. (Pulled from: http://www.cornwalldevelopmentcompany.co.uk/assets/file/Low%20Carbon/CAC%20Info%20sheets/13.03.28%20CAC%20Info%20sheet%207.pdf) Once the product exists it has an ECF. Using what exists, rather than purchasing anew, helps limit emissions and waste on many levels. To learn more, see this fact sheet.
So “Get Creative”, as we say at Sheridan, open your eyes in new ways to use, reuse, and repurpose what is around you your office space. Below are some ideas for how you can repurpose.
How can you share knowledge of these un(der)-used objects around the office? You could list them on scrap pieces of paper and put them on a notice board. Even better, you could gather them all in a designated spot, like a table or cupboard, so they can be seen. Or if you have a techy person in your office team, make a spreadsheet or database. It doesn’t really matter how you do it, just that you DO it.
