We’ve all heard the classics: turn off the lights, recycle your paper, shut your computer down at night. Important? Absolutely. Fresh and exciting? About as much as a soggy office donut. Below are some unique and slightly more fun ways you can conserve at work without feeling like you’re nagging your coworkers.
Conservation starts before you clock in. Could you carpool with a coworker? Maybe bike one or two days a week? If that’s not possible, try “errand piggybacking,” and coordinate dropping off mail, picking up supplies, or grabbing coffee in one shared trip instead of three separate drives. Think of it as a group mission for efficiency.
Before ordering new supplies, try a little creative repurposing. Old three-ring binders missing the cover sleeve? Wrap them in leftover wrapping paper and voilà, instant stylish binders. Outdated letterhead? Perfect for scratch pads, doodle art, or you could even shred it for packing material.
We all know “go paperless” is the goal, but sometimes a printout is unavoidable. How about instead of printing fewer times, we print smarter. Use smaller margins, condensed fonts, and double-sided printing. Also ask yourself, “Does this entire packet need to be printed?” Sometimes, only one or two pages are actually used in meetings. Share the rest digitally. You’ll save paper and maybe even shorten your meeting!
Food waste is a silent culprit in office life. Try starting a “Friday Clean-Out Lunch.” Instead of everyone buying lunch, coworkers bring their leftover meals or snacks from the week, and you pool them into an impromptu buffet. It clears fridge space, keeps perfectly good food from hitting the trash, and weirdly enough, can turn into a weekly highlight.
Skip sticky notes by shifting to a communal whiteboard (or chalkboard wall, if your office is cool like that). It’s reusable, visual, and secretly reduces clutter.
Encourage coworkers to pack lunches in reusable containers instead of bringing in takeout every day. If everyone picks one day a week to commit, the impact adds up fast—less trash, fewer delivery car miles, and maybe even healthier lunches. Pro tip: award bragging rights for the fanciest packed meal.
All those files and emails sitting on the server? They take energy to store. Challenge your team to a monthly “inbox spring cleaning” or file purge. It’s oddly satisfying, frees up storage, and trims the digital carbon footprint.
Offices lose pens like socks in a dryer. Instead of constantly buying new packs, set up a communal jar where people drop off extras. It’s a small step, but it keeps pens circulating instead of disappearing into the mysterious pen void of the universe.
Conserving resources doesn’t have to mean dim hallways and guilt trips about printing. It can be fun and social! The trick is to look at the little overlooked corners of office life, like the breakroom or the commute, and rethink how they operate. Small tweaks add up, and when the office does them together, it stops feeling like a chore and starts feeling like a shared win.
You’ll find plenty more on our website, including simple conservation hacks to delightfully weird ones you may not expect.
