Nowadays coworking spaces are becoming more and more popular and a lot of young people are being inspired by the opportunity to work in such an office. The perks are many: unlimited fast internet, personal desk, office with air conditioning, printers, coffee machine and last but not least, people who you can interact with at help each other with creative ideas.

Withal pollution around the world is still a huge problem so we must think more about the environment while we innovate our coworking office. Here are a few ideas that might be helpful to anyone who is willing to help the planet while doing the best from their job:

Indoor bike parking

We all know that bicycles are not causing any pollution in contrast to cars, buses and other vehicles, so we can inspire our coworkers to avoid their automobiles or public transport and ride a bike.

Become paperless

The waste of paper is a huge problem, many trees are being destroyed and not enough are being planted. It’s vital for our future existence due to the fact that trees are creating the oxygen we breathe. With that being said, what we can do about it is to use less paper. How? – by recycling paper, using already used sheets for internal paperwork, using cloud drives and shared files, memos etc. Did you know that 30% of the printed papers in the office are never being collected which automatically becomes a waste? Now we can collect paper and use it again in the office. Also, when we set daily tasks or have some kind of written reminder we can put a whiteboard in the office and write there, instead of printing it on a piece of paper of leaving paper memos.

Recycling

Putting 3 different big recycle bins in the office would inspire people to separate their junk. Not only paperwork but tea bags and coffee grinds could be also collected separately with paper napkins likewise the plastic items such as cutleries, cups and straws. You’d be surprised how many things you can do from recycled materials – there a lot of gift ideas created with recycled materials that you can find on the internet. It’s a great way to inspire people to be more creative and still reduce pollution.

Solar energy

The amount of energy used in a coworking office space is bigger due to the fact there are a lot of people working in one place, whilst every each of them is using a computer, a phone charger, the coffee machine, there must be also an air conditioner – big enough to cover the whole office and enough lightning. This energy usage is also not that cheap compared to the idea of solar energy. By putting a few solar panels on the top of the building we can gain cheaper energy which would be eco-friendly.

Fabric bags

Have you ever paid attention to how many stores are using plastic bags and did you know how hard a plastic bag degrades? There is an interesting solution even for the office: we can get a few fabric bags and offer people to take them when they go to the grocery store during the lunch break and after shopping, return them in the office so they can be used again. Fabric bags can also be engraved which is awesome.

Straws

Plastic straws are the other thing causing huge plastic pollution, therefore, it will be best if we find an alternative, as most of the people find it more comfortable to drink from a straw. We can replace single-use plastic straws with something that biodegrades faster or could be used more than once. There are a lot of ideas such as reusable glass or plastic straws and biodegradable paper straws but the last ones are fastly becoming soggy so people avoid them. The “genius” idea here is butacini – pasta in the form of straws. It fits perfectly and doesn’t even change the taste of the drink or get soggy.

Unusual gifts

The idea is to use plastic or metal cans from coke or other fizzy drinks and to turn them into pots with planted flowers and give them as gifts to the clients or the coworkers. You just need to cut the can into half and you can decorate it as you wish.

These are just a few of the ways we can make our coworking space more eco-friendly and help to save our planet. Don’t forget to recycle and have fun, of course.

Author: Boryana Dragieva