4 Easy Ways to Make Your Home Office a Green Office

Telecommuting and flexible jobs continue to be on the rise, with job listings increasing a whopping 400 percent in the past four years. With more and more professionals working from home, it’s important to keep in mind the ways we can all be green in our home offices.

The act of telecommuting is inherently green because it saves millions of tons of carbon dioxide gas from being emitted into the atmosphere every year through reduced commuting to work. According to the Telework Research Network, “Half-time telecommuting could reduce carbon emissions by over 51 million metric tons a year -- the equivalent of taking all of New York’s commuters off the road -- [and it saves] 281 million barrels of oil worth $22 billion in oil imports.”

But outside of the commute, working from a home office can be just as bad for the environment as working from a traditional office, unless you take some easy steps to be green at home.

Here are 4 easy ways to make your home office a green office:

1. Weatherproof your house.

Leaky windows, improperly fitted doors, uninsulated attics - these can all make your home office gobble up energy throughout the year for heating and cooling. Not just in your home office, but throughout your house, take care to caulk windows and weatherstrip doors, and better insulate your attic and exterior walls. Your energy bills AND the environment will thank you.

2. Power down when you’re out of the home office.

Grabbing lunch with a friend? Going for a walk with your dog? Taking a personal call? If you’re not going to be at your desk for at least 10-15 minutes, put your computer into sleep mode and turn off your monitors. If you’re done with work for the day, turn off your computer and monitor completely, and unplug it from the wall or turn off the power strip. According to one energy efficiency expert, “while in use, the average laptop requires 15-60 watts, while desktops use 65-250 watts, plus an additional 15-70 for the monitor. In sleep mode, however, most laptops use a measly two watts, and desktops with monitors use 5-10 watts.”

3. Go digital.

With so many options for online bill-paying, and digital file creation and storage, it’s almost unnecessary to use paper in your home office. An organization called PayItGreen estimates that, “the average household would save 6.6 pounds of paper every year, avoid the release of 171 pounds of greenhouse gases and 63 gallons of wastewater, and cut gas consumption by 4.5 gallons” just by switching to electronic bill paying!

Free services like Google (News - Alert) Docs and Dropbox help you to store your documents in the cloud so that they are always safe and secure (rather than storing them in your computer alone, which is all well-and-good until your hard-drive crashes...). Or if you need to work with computer software to create documents, like Microsoft (News - Alert) Word and Excel, try a service like Carbonite, a FlexJobs member savings partner, which automatically backs up your computer every day to the cloud to ensure that all your computer files are safe and secure. Either way, going digital will save trees and your wallet.

4.  Take advantage your relaxed dress code.

The big problem with a home office is that in order to heat or cool that office you usually have to heat and cool your whole house - something you wouldn’t have to do if you were at a traditional office all day. Turn your thermostat down a few degrees in the winter, and up a few degrees in the summer, and take advantage of your relaxed dress code to add or remove layers of clothing to stay warm or cool off. It’s a huge perk of working from home - no stuffy suits or business clothes to worry about - so break out the shorts and t-shirts during the summer, and invest in some big fuzzy sweaters and a cozy pair of slippers for winter.

There are tons of ways to go green in your home office. Think you’re already a green telecommuter? Check out these 5 ways that telecommuters aren’t green for more tips on greening your home office. If you want even more great tips, check out these 30 ways to go green at work right now. Every little bit helps - and most of what you do not only reduces your impact on the environment, but also reduces your home energy bills. What home office worker doesn’t like that?

 

Brie Weiler Reynolds is a freelance writer and the Manager of Content and Community Outreach at FlexJobs, the leading site for telecommuting and flexible job listings, where she blogs and manages social media. A college career advisor by trade, Brie writes about job search and career advice, workplace trends, personal finance, and lifestyle. She finds joy in discovering and creating useful information and resources which help others to bring order and purpose to their lives, and she is passionate about work-life balance and environmental sustainability. A native of upstate New York, Brie has lived in Boston, New Jersey, and Atlanta over the past ten years, and enjoys traveling at home and abroad.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi