Victoria—and many Victoria businesses by extension—prides itself on being among the greenest towns in Canada. With lots of cyclists, beautiful gardens and forward-thinking green businesses, it’s a good thing to review how your own business can be greener by being more energy efficient.
Luckily, our winters are quite mild, which already helps with saving on electricity during the colder months. However, you can cut even more on your energy usage by following these simple tips.
Plan a regular HVAC check-up
Many offices’ biggest energy expense is for heating and air conditioning. Although you can’t completely avoid this expense, there are ways to make the system more efficient. The first step is to have your HVAC system checked and cleaned regularly—we require three times a year.
Adjust the temperature to the time of the year and day
When no one’s at the office, there’s no need to keep the space warm (or cool in the summers). When leaving the office, turn down the heating to 16-18 degrees in the winter and turn off the air conditioning in the summer. During office hours, a temperature of 22-23 degrees is sufficiently warm in the winter and sufficiently cool in the summer.
Use natural light
If you’re lucky enough to get lots of natural light in your office, you can probably turn off the artificial lights during most of the day. To enhance the effect, install mirrors on walls and paint them a light color like white or cream. You can also reduce shade by trimming trees around your windows.
Upgrade your equipment
Your old photocopier/printer makes a lot of noise and keeps jamming whenever someone prints a color document. Isn’t it time you replace it with something more recent? Upgrading your office equipment also has the advantage of better energy consumption. Look for the EnergyStar logo on your new equipment.
Some tips: inkjet printers use less electricity than laser printers, and laptop computers use less electricity than desktop computers.
Program hibernation and sleep mode on your computers
When employees leave their desks for more than 15 minutes, there’s no reason to keep the computer on. Enabling hibernation and sleep mode on your company’s computers will lower your energy consumption.
By reducing your office’s energy consumption, not only do you lower your utility costs, but you also help keep our planet a little greener.
Photo by Zhao!