'Greening Your Office': Pocket guide for an eco-workplace

This week's eco-topic: Green workplace

Prefer books to blog posts? A new pocket-sized, 96-page booklet -- "Greening Your Office -- From Cupboard to Corporation: An A-Z Guide" -- came out just last month, with advice to help make your workplace an eco-friendly one.

"Greening the Office" is organized as a glossary beginning with Adhesives and ending with Yellow Pages -- making it, more accurately, an A-Y guide. But while the booklet's a useful resource, it's not a step-by-step greening guide as I'd initially hoped for, since the eco-information is simply organized alphabetically. I would have preferred a guide that presented the info in a way that made it easier for companies to take green action -- perhaps starting with the easy to implement, low hanging fruit first (i.e. changing light bulbs to CFLs) to later move on to bigger, more difficult changes (eco-renovating a building).

More importantly, some of the information is actually out of date -- although perhaps our economy's changing at an extremely rapid rate. A pullout quote in the booklet claims "Our consumption of paper in the United States continues to rise by about 20% each year" -- but the NY Times reported earlier this month that worldwide paper consumption has plateaued -- and is actually decreasing in the richest countries, including the U.S.

Still, most of the advice in the booklet is sound, with greening suggestions for everything from carpools to postage meters. The booklet is most relevant for the employer or decision-maker, as much of the advice centers around either directly instituting major changes or motivating employees to do so. Maybe you'll want to get it for your boss; it'll only put you back $7.95.

Comments

[Beth aka Fake Plastic Fish]

Please enter me in this one. Still trying to convince the powers that be that even if they don't care about the environment, becoming a green business is a great selling point these days. Perhaps showing them this book would help.

[Rebecca]

Please enter me in! I have been trying to make my workplace greener and this would help so much! love it! thanks!