Want To Go Green? Shut Your Office Down

The United States produced an estimated 5 billion-plus tons of carbon dioxide last year, making us one of the world’s leading polluters. At the same time — Yahoo! policy aside — co-working, flexible and home-based office solutions are dramatically on the rise. However, even though it’s estimated that a quarter of all U.S. workers have the option to work from home, only 2 percent of us do so full time.

If you’re on the fence about remote work but keen on reducing your company’s carbon footprint, consider the environmental advantages of remote work.

For one thing, considering 4 billion trees are chopped down each year to produce our paper products, it’s clear that future business models must start using less paper or our planet will suffer. And working from home means using less paper, since the only practical way to share your work is digitally.

My company, the Cutler Group, is a tech PR agency that specializes in working with mobile, software, and edtech companies, and we are able to operate primarily remotely — which means we don’t worry anymore about fuel consumption or cartridge recycling. Yet we function as efficiently as any office. With the advent of video communication apps like Skype, cloud storage options like Google Drive and Dropbox, time management programs like Basecamp and TimeFox, and a variety of other digital business solutions, making the home or local cafe your office is easier than ever.

There are also significant fuel savings for you and your employees. Driving to work leads to traffic congestion, an outrageous carbon dioxide output, not to mention headaches. If the 25 percent of us that could telecommute did so — excluding the millions of us that could do so if our offices closed tomorrow — fuel savings would be as high as $3.9 billion annually.

Finally, once you commit to working without a central office, there are even more steps you can take to green your home work space (and often save money on energy costs at the same time):

• Artificial lighting accounts for 44 percent of electricity use in the workplace, so exchange your incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs). No need to worry about installing them en masse at the office if you don’t have one in the first place.
• Buy an EPEAT®-registered (made with less hazardous waste) and/or Energy Star certified computers and electronics.
• Choose eco-friendly office supplies — you can now get everything from pencils made from recycled denim to compostable packing materials.
• Reassess your home energy supplier annually in order to find the best prices or switch over from “dirty” coal power to clean renewable energy. Though you might pay more for green power, it can help your household as a whole cut carbon emissions drastically (the average U.S. household produces 9 tons of carbon a year).

For large corporations, a central office may still be a necessity.  But for small businesses and particularly for startups — where structures and schedules are often flexible — telecommuting is becoming more appealing and efficient every day. And there’s no better time than now to reexamine the way we live and work in order to preserve our beautiful planet and its people.

Zach Cutler is a dynamic marketing entrepreneur and founder of Cutler Group, a New York-based tech PR agency focused on innovative edtech, biotech, app and software companies.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.