Chris Messina has really lit a fire under my butt to get our shared “coworking” office CitizenSpace operating and certified as green. While Sustainable Marketing is already approved as a green business via the Co-Op America Green Business Network, it’s only recently that we’ve had a real office outside of my home. Now we can begin to participate in the Bay Area Green Business Program.
Some steps we’ve already taken:
- Ordered a full set of trash, recycling, and compost bins from our trash provider.
- Continuing our Renewable Energy Certificate program to offset our carbon emissions. See Sustainable Wesbsites Wind Power page for more details. We are going to extend this to the whole office in addition to Sustainable Websites.
- Our partner Ethotec has prototyped a green business basics class.
- Created a page on the Coworking Wiki to encourage other coworking spaces to be green. Feel free to add to it!
- When we moved into CitizenSpace Tara and Chris chose sustainable bamboo flooring and low-energy compact fluorescent light-bulbs (CFLs)
- Checked with our landlord on whether we had a low-flow toilet (we did!)
- Applied to the San Francisco Green Business Program.
And what’s next:
- Figuring out a strategy to deal with phantom power – all the various chargers (“do you have wall warts?!”) for our gadgets sucking up power even when they’re not charging.
- Encouraging other technology businesses to go green and devising innovative programs to accomplish this.
Let me know in the comments what you’ve done in your office to make it greener, I would love to find out!
Technorati Tags: coworking, officegreening, green business, greenoffice, citizenspace
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This is great, Ivan!
Since I know you all host events there too, here are some tips from “Green Mary” about greening events:
http://www.netsquared.org/blog/britt-bravo/how-to-green-your-tech-conference
She might be a good resource for questions that come up as would Chris Waters of the Nomad Cafe in Oakland who started a green cafe:
http://www.worldchanging.com/local/sanfrancisco/archives/005917.html
Keep up the great work!
Britt
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Another good resource I just found today is the Sierra Club’s 10 ways to green your office: http://sierraclub.typepad.com/greenlife/2007/03/10_ways_to_go_g.html I think we are doing pretty well on these – anyone know how to set up our printers to print double-sided? Also a local green office supply store is: http://thegreenoffice.com/
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