Daily Loaf

Things are really starting to get organized at the CL office as we’ll continue to show you with part 3 of their green office makeover. The Sales, Marketing, and Classifieds departments get into the action next! I had the pleasure of working hands-on with James (Ad Director), Joran (Marketing + Promotions Director), and Terri (Classifieds Manager) in their workspaces. My plan for each department was to follow the 4 Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle) to create more space and better organization in their areas.

The video starts off with London (Operations Manager) painting the stage in CL’s new event space – that’s just for fun! As the camera pans through the lobby, I’d like you to note that the very special “something” we created for the community is finally revealed. It’s CL’s Community Center! It’s a very cool place for members of the community to bring their business and event flyers and place them on the table or bulletin board to share with others. This center also contains CDs and other items that CL wants to share with you – for FREE! So stop by and take a few! This is one way CL is recycling items and giving back to the community at the same time. A pan to the main hallway of CL’s offices shows that items previously blocking a clear passageway through the offices have been strategically moved to other more appropriate areas to allow for an easier, safer, and more visually appealing walk through CL.

Video after the jump
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David Warner's (New) Desktop Filing System

I’m back to tell you that some serious clutter sorting, purging, and space-clearing began at the CL offices as we continue their green office makeover. Everything in the mail center, sales counter, and reception desk was evaluated and paper, supplies, and items that didn’t get used or add functionality were either recycled, donated, or discarded. Storage units, filing cabinets, and bins that didn’t serve a purpose in their current space were moved to a “staging area” we set up in the back of the office to be “repurposed” somewhere else later.

Next, we began to clear space in the lobby to make room for the ”very special something” for the community that I referred to in my first CL green makeover post . The half-empty wire bins in the lobby were disassembled and a simple, two-level rack to hold issues of CL was placed in a corner of the lobby next to the sofa, making the current issue easy to find and read! A table and bulletin board were also added to the space. You’ll want to know what this area is going to be used for, so stay tuned!

Video after the break:
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I’m a green office specialist and I’ve been privileged to be a contributor with the Creative Loafing Green Community since its launch this April. Sharing my green office tips through my posts recently led to an unexpected proposition from CL’s online producer, Stephen Hammill. The proposition: to come to CL’s office and consult with them on their office cleanup and reorganization project. Happy to assist my green partners in any way I could, I agreed.

I arrived at CL’s office at 810 North Howard Avenue in Tampa on July 1st for the consultation, workplace and workspace needs assessment, and walk through. I was met by their smiling and enthusiastic operations manager, London. We were joined shortly by Joran, their marketing director, who began to immediately follow us around with a camera (that was kind of creepy at first, but I eventually got used to it).

At the conclusion of the needs assessment, the scope of work became clear.

Video after the jump
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You spend a lot of time in your home or business office and you can clean the air you breathe as you work just by adding a plant to your workspace! Plants are the quickest, most efficient filters of the most common air pollutants, such as formaldehyde, benzene, xylene and ammonia (source: longtime NASA researcher Dr. B.C. “Bill” Wolverton in his book How to Grow Fresh Air). It’s all about photosynthesis and how plants produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide. Through this process, plants absorb up to 87% of indoor air pollutants.
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When I help my clients organize their offices during a green office organizing session, the first place we always start is with reducing paper. The most common request I receive is to help people “unbury” themselves from the mounds of paper they have accumulated in piles on their desktops and in their workspaces. There’s mail, to-do lists, printed emails, information printed from the Internet, newspaper articles, stacks of business cards, letters and more! Sound familiar?

Our busy home and work lives have contributed to our lack of time to manage our paper. And unfortunately, paper clutter is environmental clutter. And when paper isn’t organized, we have the potential to waste even more paper. How many times have you looked for a piece of paper that you needed and couldn’t find? And then instead of taking the time to search through your piles of paper for it, you just decide to reprint it (because that’s easier and faster). Eventually, that original piece of paper will show up but by this time it’s too late – you’ve already created more paper waste! Read the rest of this entry »

Green Office Tip of the Week from your CL Green Office Specialist:

Did you know that the average American uses the equivalent of a tree 100 feet high and 18 inches in diameter each year? And if 10,000 CL Green Community readers would use digital desktop notes instead of three packages of sticky notes, we would save 36 trees? (Source: Ideal Bite www.idealbite.com)

Since my posts this month are about reducing paper usage, I would be remiss if I didn’t address these office staple stacks of paper that most of us use each and every day. I think we all agree that sticky notes are fun and that they come in cool sizes, shapes and colors. What’s not to love? There are “regular” sticky notes and “super-sticky” notes. The variety is ridiculously endless. But sticky notes are paper and to be eco-conscious and reduce our paper usage, we should use them sparingly. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s continue to “green your office” with another great tip to “reduce”. In my last post, I talked about the importance of starting at the source. This week, we’re going to focus on reducing paper before it enters your office in the first place. Less paper in means less paper out – and less time figuring out what to do with that stack of junk mail and catalogs you receive at your workplace each and every day! Saving time means saving money so we have an extra incentive here, right? 

Green Office Tip of the Week from your CL Green Office Specialist:

Ok, so this is going to be easy and painless, I promise. The best part about it is that this service is free! Go to the National Do Not Mail List website. You can click on one checkbox to remove your name from all mailing lists or you can select specific mailing lists to be removed from. You will find 10 major categories of lists from catalogs and credit card applications to charitable requests and telephone offerings. To register, enter your name, address and email address. Click the checkbox to remove your name, hit submit and a confirming email is headed to your inbox. Click on the link in the confirming email you receive and you are done! The entire process just takes a few minutes. It may take several weeks or months for your name to be removed from the mailing lists you selected but you can feel good right away about the green step forward you just took! Read the rest of this entry »

It’s easier to “green your office” than you might think. Let’s start by taking small steps together! We can all do our part in our offices by applying this familiar mantra to our everyday worklife – you guessed it – that mantra is “reduce, reuse recycle”!

Did you know that those words are written in that order intentionally? Reduce is listed first. Why? Because it’s important to start at the source. Reducing consumption is the first step in preventing waste and pollution. Then fewer products are needed, produced, used and disposed of in the first place! So try to buy less. And try to buy only what you need versus what you want. Think necessity versus luxury, and you’re on you way to being an eco-conscious consumer! Easy, right? Read the rest of this entry »