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GreenOffice Hero
This month's greenoffice hero...
Patricia, Saskatchewan

When I began working in my office, we used paper plates, plastic utensils and cups whenever we had a meeting. By end of day, the garbage cans were filled with plastic pollutants. We also were having water brought into our office through a local water distributor, and decided we needed to do something about this. 

We contacted our supervisor and asked about installing a dishwasher, and soon went shopping for dishes and utensils that we could use everyday. Most importantly, we realized that the tap water in our city was every bit as good as the water in the water cooler—so we decided to stop buying water. 

Just doing those two things encouraged us to pay attention to other changes that needed to be made in our office. We’ve adjusted the air conditioning and heating when no one is in the office, I ride my bike as often as I can to work and we recycle all of our paper.  Not only do we feel better about doing these things, but our business partners seem to feel better about them as well.


Patricia, Saskatchewan
July, 2008

Past Winners
Jolene, Manitoba

My coworkers and I feel its time for our industry to wake up and smell the fair–trade, shade-grown, organic coffee. So we’ve taken action by starting a “Green Team,” in house initiative.
Our Mission is to instigate, effect and maintain green practices and thinking around the office, amongst staff, and to clients and suppliers.

Everyone wants to be green. But there’s a big difference between saying it and being it. Here’s a bit on what we're doing:

Recycle everything, refusing junk mail and asking for only one copy of publications. Printing on FSC or 100% post-consumer recycled paper, drinking fair-trade, shade-grown coffee. We use real dishes and cutlery, organic cotton tea-towels and dish cloths, buy local products, avoid air travel when possible (or off-set our emissions) and purchase green gifts for clients. Last but not least: we e-mail a ‘Green Tip’ to staff every Monday.


Jolene, Manitoba
June, 2008

Desiree, Alberta

We are a bright group of individuals but going green wasn’t second nature to us. We didn’t have a recycling program so every piece of paper discarded went directly to the garbage can. It’s just paper right? No vending machine on site, yet empty pop cans cluttered desks. No worries we thought, the garbage is just a hand toss away.

As dirty coffee cups piled up, we just ran the dishwasher. Your favourite mug will be shiny and new for tomorrow! 

Sound familiar? It took some effort to change our habits but we invested in a shredder, and now our discarded paper is shredded routinely and tied up nicely. Even the CEO is involved; hauling the bags out on garbage day to ensure it gets picked up. And those pop cans get taken by an employee to the bottle depot.

Re-use has become part of our mandate. Old office supplies are re-used internally till they get shabby. No more running the dishwasher every night. Two or more people going to the same meeting travel in one car now. We even keep the lights off when there’s plenty of sunlight. These may be small steps but they’re our first steps in being more conscious of the environment – and every small step for man is a huge step for mankind!!


Desiree, Alberta
May, 2008