Generally, office creates more greenhouse gases as compared to homes and even factories. For example, a photocopier that is left on continuously for 7 years over its two-million copies life would consumes substential amount of electricity, papers and toners. It also requires air-conditioning to cool down the operating heat. The greenhouse gas emissions could easily exceed 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide which is more than the total greenhouse gas emissions of an average home over the same 7-year period.

Green Electricity Office Equipment

Increasingly, many office supplies companies are considering environmental impacts as their main design criteria. An energy-efficient photocopier designed to work well with recycled paper and refilled toner cartridges would easily half the paper and toner bills. Enhanced with auto-powersave design, easy double-sided copy and effective paper recycling system, the electricity usage could be reduced further by up to 80% and greenhouse gas emissions by 75%. More trees would also be left on the ground which would otherwise been chopped down to make paper.

An office with paper reduction and recycling schemes in place for photocopiers and computer printers can reduce the costs and environmental impacts of paper use by more than 50%. Putting in place a “green electricity guide” can help offices purchase environmentally friendly office equipment and use it to reduce the operating and environmental costs, thus cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions.

Green Electricity Office Environment

Green electricity office practices are more than just writing up a green electricity guide. It must start from the top management, making more people to adopt a “green option” daily working lifestyle. By spreading the awareness among colleagues, teams, bosses, suppliers and customers, green electricity will soon add up and become the prevailing culture.

Green electricity office can begin from the fittings and office habits. To start with, the purchasing department should always look for green products such as machines with auto power saving sleep mode when not in use. All lightings should be fitted with energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.

Green Electricity Office Habits And Practices

Habits and practices can contribute greatly to a green electricity environment. For example, a simple act of moving office desk near the window would help to cut down electricity use. This saving can be substantial as many offices spend as much as 40% of their electricity bill on lighting. Turning lights off when leaving office, meeting room or conference room is another good green office habit to cultivate.

Other green electricity office practices include the habits of using digital storage solutions to cut paper and reduce clutter. One 100 Megabyte zip content is equivalent 4-drawer filing cabinet and one CD can hold nearly a roomful of paper!

Finally, drinking cups and mugs should be standard pantry item, even when serving drinks to guests. Mugs are also great promotional items to be given away to customers, prospects and even staff. By cutting down the use of paper cups, we can save as many as 300 coffee cups a month.

Multi-Use Green Designs

One of the tenets of the new urbanism is combining residential and retail spaces in the same building. This allows city dwellers to easily walk to the bakery and cleaners around the block rather than making trips all over town. It also seeks to eliminate the need for automobiles by placing such buildings near public transit such as urban train lines.

Green Certification

There are organizations that make inspections and give out ratings of green certification. Not unlike the organizations that certify organic foods in the US, these organizations are NGOs that have drafted documents that outline the basic requirements of sustainable building and design practices and judge buildings accordingly.

Water-Saving Green Designs

Conserving water in these designs is a high priority. Many of the most highly rated green buildings make the best possible use of water, often even harvesting it from the sky for use. Eco-roofs are one way that gray water from residential and business use can be recycled for irrigation. Moreover that irrigation can support plants that help cool in the summer and function as insulation in the winter.

By building such developments with water conserving devices such as low flow toilets and facets, high capacity washing machines, hot water on demand and others, vast amounts of fresh water can be saved in the first place.

Urban Agriculture

These buildings are, perhaps surprisingly, well-suited for urban agriculture. Green roofs can be used to grow fruiting crops and even trees that are now gracing roofs all over the world. As agricultural and horticultural productions are brought closer to city, more people in urban areas will begin to have a stake in their own food.

Retrofitting Old Designs To Green Designs

Not all building projects are new construction. There are many old buildings that can be retrofitted to adapt to a new, low-carbon urban environment. This process goes well beyond installing some insulation. The actual function of many older buildings can be adjusted with redesign to encourage new urbanism in older buildings.

Environmental Awareness Is On The Rise

In terms of environmental awareness, in the span of just a few years, there has been a dramatic shift in how people perceive climate change. It may be disappearing polar bears or killer bees, but the wacky weather that is now apparent to so many has become the focus on all front, from political to economical to even consumption and lifestyle.

Climate change has been on the mind of researchers for over a century. While searching for the cause of ice ages, it was discovered that the climate seemed to warm whenever carbon dioxide levels reached a critical point. Therefore, it was reasoned, the burning of coal could one day cause the atmosphere to heat up too much. When this was first proposed in the late 17th century, it was thought it could take 500 years or more for such levels to be reached. But in less than half that time, the earth as far exceeded the carbon dioxide concentrations that it were theorized would case the opposite of an ice age to occur. Had not for the consumption of petroleum becoming so widespread, the awareness of climate warming may take center stage another few hundred years later.

A Time To Change For Greener Planet

The world is in dire straits with severe problems in the environment and these problems won’t go away on their own. Global warming and climate problems are getting worse and are having a big impact on the planet. People need to get involved and make changes at work, at home and in their purchasing habits. Changes need to happen soon, though. There are significant warnings signs that can be ignored no longer!

There has never been such an important time to make changes. Not only will the changes impact our finances and our health but they will impact our family’s future as well. Not only will a greener planet save our money but will extend our life and quality of life. Instead of being afraid of natural disasters, we can embrace a new greener lifestyle and feel good about it!

Starts With A Baby Step

Making small changes in our life will equate to big changes in the world and we can orchestrate change first in our house, then our neighborhood, our workplace and our city and if a lot of people do this, the degradation of the world will slow down and things will improve.

Migration Of Urban Into Suburban Living

Though there are also recent demographic statistics to suggest a movement back to downtowns, the larger shift to suburban living remains. What many are not aware of is their high exposure to ecological disasters at suburban living.

As communities continue to expand outward from the city core, the effects of sprawl has resulted in settlement patterns into hazardous areas that were once farmland, forested lands or open space. Scenic areas that are frequently known as high hazard areas are also becoming popular. Specific examples include barrier islands, coastal property, rivers and streams, steep sloped areas and woodlands.

Migration Of Rural Into Suburban Living

In less developed countries, suburban living are exposed to yet another kind of ecological disasters. Not only are they exposed to earthquake, hurricane and flood, many suburbia is doomed to be crushed under their own waste debris. The ground-levels of both heavy metals and ozone pollution can be stunningly high in many suburbs.

While suburban residents’ exposures to ecological disaster are much higher, they are also the least prepared due to their social and political conditions. People with rural lifestyle are always prepared for emergencies as it is part of rural living. Rapid urbanization and migration are changing what were truly rural 20 years ago to suburban. Many residents are now expecting to be taken care of as their understanding and their respond to disasters are no longer the same.

Sustainable Resources For Tourism

In many countries, tourism service providers who are committed to the design and development of exciting new experiences in sustainable tourism are gaining high popularity. For example, the largest growth sectors in hotel and tourism business now are sustainable accommodations that lessen the release of carbon load.

Sustainable tourism is to meet the needs of tourists while maintaining cultural integrity, essential ecological processes, and biological diversity and life support systems. Sustainable tourism management of natural and environmental resources will ensure that all economic, social and aesthetic needs are fulfilled, while protecting and enhancing the opportunity for the future.

Sustainable Cultural Tourism

Sustainable cultural tourism ensures that both travelers and locals will benefit from the awareness and interaction of environmental, cultural, conservational and economic issues. Residents learn that their customs may be of interest to foreigners, and travelers obtain more in depth knowledge on the destination.

This new way of doing tourism is adding tangible value to the common structure of tourism services. The environmentally friendliness of tourism products is indeed building a competitive new market. Actually, consumers have a greater level of consciousness about the components in tourism services that do make a positive difference in the destination they visit.

Certification On Sustainable Tourism

Certification programs provide guidance for responsible business practices in sustainable tourism. It can also be used as a tool to communicate sustainable tourism commitment in the marketplace. In Africa, certifications in sustainable tourism also provide added incentives to preserving land for wildlife as land area which are subject to habitat encroachment are certified and preserved.

Active Geothermal Heat

Active geothermal energy is often associated with volcanic and seismically active regions. Active geothermal energy that produces steam for electric production is restricted to unique environments where magma reaches near the crust. Most of the active geothermal plants are located in volcanically active places, like Iceland, where the Earth’s outer crust is thin.

In recent years, hot dry rock and magma are the two forms of active geothermal energy being actively researched into. Both are able to provide thousands of megawatts for region as large as California.

Passive Geothermal Heat

Passive geothermal heating can be used anywhere. It works by using the heat of the earth to lower the amount of heating required in home or business. This is possible because the mass of the entire planet is kept at a constant 50F/20C or so.

All that’s required is a long length of pipe and excavation equipment known as geothermal heat pumps which provide both heating and cooling. In the “closed loop” configuration, this pipe snakes through the residential yard. “Open loop” system would typically run piping a couple hundred feet below the earth’s surface (or occasionally connect to a nearby body of water) where the temperature stays relatively constant throughout the year. Open loop system is less commonly used and cycle water from the bottom of a pond. This requires less pipe and digging, but may be subject to local environmental regulations.

In the close loop system, the other end of geothermal heat pump is attached to the foundation of the house. The pump circulates water and anti-freeze within the system to allow a lot of surface contact with subsoil. The heat is then radiated up through the house itself. In winter, since the ground is warmer than outside air, the heat pump expends less energy than conventional systems to heat up the building. During summer, since the ground is colder than outside air during summer, the pump also expends less energy than conventional systems to cool down the building.

Environmental Risk Of Geothermal Energy

Geothermal heat pump maintains high-efficiency all the time in virtually any climate. Indeed, at places with severe climates when it is very hot outside or very cold outside, or places where climate is characterized by high daily temperature swings, that is exactly when geothermal heat pumps are ideal.

Considered a green technology, geothermal does raise environmental concerns. In certain cases, steam extraction can allow other gases, like carbon dioxide (CO2), to escape. However, the amount of CO2 released per kilowatt-hour of electricity is only a few percent that of coal-fired power plants.

At certain locations with history of earthquakes, high-pressure water pumping is known to induce earthquakes ranging from 3.1 to 3.4 on the Richter scale.