BusinessGreen's no-cost green office guide

The glut of green office guides that have emerged over the past year have all had their merits but they have also been repeatedly guilty of lumping together the low- and no-cost moves firms can take to cut down the environmental impact of their facilities. Yet as anyone who, having mislaid the receipt, tries to put a £5 taxi fare through expenses knows, getting authorisation for a modest expenditure is in some ways as challenging as getting the green light for a multimillion-pound project.

Too often any application to get a few readies out of a corporate finance department is sent back by someone deep within the bowels of the finance team with a note explaining that for the money to be cleared the accountants will first have to see a 500-word report on the £10 investment, in triplicate, yesterday.

So what can you do today to make your office greener that genuinely has no cost attached and avoids you having to take on those holding the corporate purse strings? BusinessGreen takes a look at the top 10 options:

Turn off your PC – Let's start with a simple one. You waste about £35 per year and are responsible for well over 1,000lbs of carbon dioxide if you leave your PC on at all times. There is no argument really, just turn it off when you leave the office.

Turn off other people's PCs – You need to be a bit braver for this one as it involves, y'know, talking to people. As long as the IT team is not doing maintenance work overnight there is no reason why anyone's PC should be left on, so if you see a colleague leaving without turning off their computer, just ask them to do so. The worst that can happen is they will call you a tree-hugging hippy, but then again they might even thank you.

Turn off the printer, the scanner, the fax machine, and anything else with a glowing red light – There is a definite theme developing here. There is a tendency in many offices to not look much further than your own desk, but in that case who is responsible for ensuring all those communal devices are not needlessly wasting energy overnight? In many cases the answer, sadly, is no one. Even on standby many of these devices use as much as 25 per cent of the energy they use when turned on and can add hundreds, or even thousands, of pounds to annual energy bills. Turn them off at the end of the day and if someone gets in before you in the morning and cannot work out that they need to turn the devices back on again before using them, they are an idiot and do not deserve any sympathy.

Put used paper back in the printer – This might well wind up a few people, but never mind. We all know re-use is better than recycling so if you have printed out something and realised you no longer need it, just turn the sheet of paper over and put it back in the printer. There is a fair chance that the next person to use the printer will be printing out a document for their own consumption and not worry about the sullied nature of the back of the sheet of paper. If not, the paper ends up in the recycling bin anyway and they can simply put a fresh sheet in the printer.

Add a "please think about the environment" message to the bottom of your email signature – You might already do this, but if not, why not? It takes next to no effort and if it ensures that just a few people think and stop before they click print, it is worthwhile.

Get rid of your bin – According to green business advisory body Envirowise, 70 per cent of office waste is recyclable but only eight per cent ever makes it as far as a recycling bin. We are far less conscientious about our waste in the office than we are at home and the main reason is that we all have a convenient bin right there under our desk. Take away the bin and make yourself get up and find one – not only will it help you to get a little more exercise, you will also be more inclined to make sure paper, plastics and other recyclable material end up in a recycling bin.

Open the blinds – This should not be news, but in case you havn't noticed the sun tends to move across the sky throughout the day – and yet office blinds will often remain steadfastly in the same position for months, if not years. If it is overcast or the sun is not dazzling anyone, raise the blinds and not only will you all feel healthier from having a bit of natural light in the office, you may find you can turn off some lights as a result.

Move your plants and furniture – Pot plants might give your office a green hue, but if they are sitting in front of windows, not to mention heating or cooling units, they are probably doing more harm than good. The same goes for filing cabinets and other office paraphernalia. If it is blocking daylight getting into the office, or hot or cold air moving around the office, you need to find it a new home.

Go on, mess with the thermostat – This is a tricky one as you might not have the access or the authority to play with the office's heating and cooling systems. An annoying complication is that if you turn off air con in one part of the office it can just make other systems elsewhere in the office work harder. However, if you have access to the controls, just try cutting the temperature by one degree in the winter and raising it one degree in the summer and see if anyone complains. A one-degree change can cut bills by 10 per cent and it is odds on that no one will even notice the change.

Talk to facilities – No one likes a do gooder, which makes this perhaps the most onerous of the no-cost options. However, if you can convince the facilities department to get onboard with green office thinking, a gamut of no- and perhaps even low-cost initiatives become viable. An email asking what they are doing to cut carbon emissions and waste may come across as a criticism and even if such criticism is justified it is probably not the best way to win friends and influence people. Instead it might be better to seek clarification on a point as a means of opening a dialogue. For example, if you ask if you can put waste plastic in the recycling bins or if you can turn down the heating a notch, it could start facilities on the path to realising more significant changes.