Reducing Energy Use in the Office

On the 22nd June, Poppy and I attended an event in the city about cutting your business running costs by reducing energy use - and how to finance energy and resource-saving equipment.

The event was hosted by Green Light North London which included various talks and an opportunity to network with people in the industry. It was particularly relevant for Poppy and the Green Deal website as we networked and she managed to collate plenty of useful content through her interviews.

I found that it was a very informative event and approached it from an Expert Market perspective, taking office equipment into account when listening to the talks. The talk “Save Money starting from today – tips, tricks and gadgets” presented by Emma Bushell from the Islington Council was particularly interesting and made me think about some methods we could apply at the workplace and also personally at home.

It also made me reflect on what methods we are already implementing at Expert Market and how energy efficient we are in our office. To my delight I realised that we are actually already implementing quite a lot of her suggested methods, some of which I have highlighted below!

The core of Emma’s presentation was about lighting and different types of bulbs and lights that you could use depending on your working environment. LED’s seem to be the future and can save around 70% on lighting costs.

She also discussed how offices should use Passive Infra-Red (PIR) sensors in rooms that are not always in use and where people forget to turn off the lights. An example of a room where this would be effective is the toilet, and here at Expert Market we are lucky enough to have PIR lights in our toilets. The lights turn on when we go in, and they turn off when we leave. It’s a simple and a great way to save energy on a light that could otherwise potentially be on the whole day.

She also advised us to use laptops instead of PCs, as they use up less energy and we are also more likely to turn them off at night. Nearly everyone at Expert Market uses laptops instead of PCs, which is another energy saving positive for us.

Finally Emma also explained how we should have our printers/photocopiers by a window, so that the fumes can be released out and avoid giving off too much heat in the office. Too much heat in the office can affect people’s concentration and ability to work, hence it is important to have the right temperature in the office. Thankfully we have our printer right by the window, helping to keep the temperatures cool and fresh in the office.

Energy saving is crucial for any office to help save you money, and also to stop using energy unnecessarily from an environmental point of view. There are also a lot of appliances and equipment which release a lot of heat, and we have to take the correct actions to stop them from over-heating the office. Think about your office environment and consider whether you’re taking some of these simple factors into consideration to implement the necessary changes.