Kae­lanne Jor­dan

So you've de­cid­ed to go green at home? If so well done!!

Now spread the green-love to your work­place.

Nowa­days the present state of the en­vi­ron­ment has en­cour­aged more and more peo­ple to 'join the move­ment' by go­ing green and de­creas­ing their own in­di­vid­ual car­bon foot­print with­in their homes and neigh­bor­hoods.

Con­sid­er­ing the fact that the ma­jor­i­ty of our wak­ing days are spent not at home, but rather at work - in our of­fices, then why should go­ing green with­in our work­places be ne­glect­ed?

Vice Pres­i­dent of ECO Life So­lu­tions, Rober­ta Robert­son ex­plains the im­por­tance of the "go­ing green con­cept" while dis­cussing im­por­tant de­ci­sions that af­fect the am­biance of a busi­ness.

"What is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to hav­ing a green build­ing is en­sur­ing that the oc­cu­pants and users of the fa­cil­i­ty ful­ly un­der­stand­ing what a green build­ing is and their role in en­sur­ing that it is op­er­at­ed that way. The build­ing on it's own will not re­main "green" un­less it is uti­lized and main­tained in such man­ner.

Aside from be­ing en­er­gy ef­fi­cient or sus­tain­able, a green build­ing is an en­vi­ron­ment that pro­vides and pro­motes good health for its oc­cu­pants and users.

There­fore some of the fac­tors to be con­sid­ered in terms of the am­biance would be:

�2 In­door air qual­i­ty - this di­rect­ly deals with is­sues such as Sick Build­ing Syn­drome and Build­ing Re­lat­ed Ill­ness­es, which re­sult from con­di­tions such as in­ad­e­quate ven­ti­la­tion, chem­i­cal con­t­a­m­i­nants from in­door and out­door sources and bi­o­log­i­cal con­t­a­m­i­nants

�2 In­door com­fort - in­ad­e­quate tem­per­a­ture, hu­mid­i­ty and even light­ing di­rect­ly im­pact on both the health and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of build­ing oc­cu­pants."

For ne­glect­ing to turn off the lights, Robert­son sug­gests mo­tion sen­sors for hall­ways, wash­rooms and for ar­eas that do not have a heavy traf­fic flow.

"An­oth­er so­lu­tion is sim­ply not putting the lights on. There are many ar­eas that are not of­ten used in of­fices such as board­rooms, fil­ing rooms etc. Hav­ing your light­ing elec­tri­cal pan­els struc­tured for ar­eas to be as in­de­pen­dent as pos­si­ble, is one way to en­sure that light is pro­vid­ed where need­ed and when need­ed. One should al­so take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the nat­ur­al light­ing avail­able to the build­ing when de­cid­ing what type of light­ing is re­quired.

There are sys­tems that work on a struc­tured tim­ing so that the en­tire build­ing, or cer­tain floors can be shut down at set times. Sim­i­lar sys­tems can al­so ad­just the tem­per­a­ture set­tings on the a/c units af­ter work­ing hours. If the build­ing is near emp­ty no need for the a/c to run at the same tem­per­a­ture." For en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly safe clean­ing flu­ids, that can be used to clean build­ings, Robert­son sug­gests prod­ucts bear­ing the Green Seal Lo­go.

"Green Seal is an in­de­pen­dent non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion ded­i­cat­ed to safe­guard­ing the en­vi­ron­ment. Its mis­sion is to achieve a more sus­tain­able world by pro­mot­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly re­spon­si­ble pro­duc­tion, pur­chas­ing and prod­ucts. That be­ing said, any prod­uct bear­ing the Green Seal Lo­go is cer­ti­fied as be­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly safe.

There are prod­ucts that do not un­der­go the Green Seal Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion but can still be con­sid­ered as Green where­as there are oth­er prod­ucts that prac­tice Green wash­ing by ad­ver­tis­ing their prod­uct as be­ing green when in fact it is not. In terms of chem­i­cals a quick test would be to look at the MS­DS (Ma­te­r­i­al Safe­ty Da­ta Sheet) of the chem­i­cal. This can be con­sid­ered as the lay­man's guide to safer/green­er prod­ucts. The MS­DS would show a pH rat­ing for the chem­i­cal. A pH of 7 is con­sid­ered as neu­tral and there­fore the clos­er to a pH of 7, the bet­ter for hu­man health."