Office workers across the UK are being urged to help support their businesses’ environmental policies as part of Green Office Week 2013.

Organised by office supplies manufacturers Avery Dennison Office and Consumer Products (Avery), the fifth annual Green Office Week aims to ‘unite offices around the country, raise awareness of the issues and offer practical help and advice to office workers looking to make a difference’.

The week will include tips and advice on becoming more eco-friendly in the office, with different days focusing on different areas. Monday will look at energy, Tuesday at transport, Wednesday at waste, Thursday at purchasing and products and Friday at green thinking and ‘innovation’.

80 per cent want business to do more for the environment

Green Office Week comes off the back of a OnePoll survey of 1,000 office workers, commissioned by Avery, that revealed that over 80 per cent of individuals in the UK would like to see the businesses they work for do more for the environment.

Around 40 per cent of participants said they would still not rate their company as environmentally friendly and less than 30 per cent said they feel they are ‘encouraged to implement green practices at work’.

Individuals identified several measures that could be improved in the workplace, such as ‘needlessly throwing away paper’ (identified by 41 per cent), ‘printing things that do not need to be printed’ (39 per cent) and ‘leaving electrical devices on standby’ (22 per cent).

According to Avery research, two of the biggest factors cited as holding businesses back are ‘not having anyone specifically allocated to environmental issues’ (as identified by 34 per cent of participants) and a lack of specialist green facilities and equipment (33 per cent).

Nearly 20 per cent of office workers said that they were ‘too busy and lacking the time to be green’, but over 60 per cent said they would be happier if their workplace was seen to be more environmentally friendly. Further, 42 per cent said that the financial crisis has increased the need for their workplace to be ‘as green as ever’, encouraging greater resourcefulness and less waste.

The survey also revealed that small businesses were not as good as implementing green policies as larger companies, with individuals working at companies with more than 250 employees being twice as likely (40 per cent) to be encouraged to be green at work than employees at smaller companies (21 per cent).

Gregg Corbett, Marketing Director at Avery, said: “We’re nearly four times more likely to consider ourselves greener at home than we are at work. This is largely due to the fact that we don’t feel we can make a big enough difference at work, where we often lack the right equipment and encouragement.

“Green Office Week sets out to change this by demonstrating the power of working together, highlighting the key issues that we can all look to address to make our workplaces more sustainable.”

Read more about Green Office Week 2013.

Environment Management standard

As part of Green Office Week, Certification International has called on organisations to prove their green credentials by gaining the environment management standard, ISO 14001:2004.

The standard sets environmental objectives and targets and is said to help reduce the cost of waste management, enable energy and material consumption savings, lower distribution costs and improve corporate image among regulators, customers and the public.

Certification International’s UK business manager Emma Fawcett-Jones commented: “By achieving certification for ISO 14001, an organisation clearly demonstrates to third parties that they have a strong commitment to reducing their impact on the environment, and are active taking steps to achieve this. The framework provided by ISO 14001 allows organisations of all sizes to implement environmental systems, monitor progress and further improve their performance.

“Green Office Week provides an ideal opportunity to look at existing environmental policies and to see how these can be improved. By working in partnership with clients we can help them take it one step further and help them achieve certification to an internationally recognised environmental standard.”