The Numbers Behind Successful Green Offices.

Non-green offices and green offices alike share the same water mains, electric lines, phone cables, and roads - living off the grid is no alternative for most businesses, that's for sure!

But the line between green offices and their wasteful counterparts is a thin one - and it has to do with how much energy your office expends in any given day, and how much your office has done to conserve the energy it uses, or to minimize its use.

According to the US Department of Energy, total energy consumption in an average office breaks down by the numbers:

Thermostat/Air conditioner, 39% of energy consumption. Keeping cool (or warm) is a positive energy monster - but you can't freeze your employees to death, can you? Green offices do their part for their employees and the environment by changing roof coatings and insulation to protect against heat and cold, or by setting the thermostat a little closer to outside ambient temperatures - to a cooler setting in winter, or a warmer setting in summer.

Lighting, 30% of energy consumption. By opening the office windows to let natural light in, or by switching light bulbs to the compact fluorescent type, offices can save up to eighty percent of the lighting energy they use.

Office equipment, 16% of energy consumption. Real green offices make sure that office equipment use is conserved and minimized. This includes switching idle computers off and converting monitors to power-friendly LCD or LED monitors.

Water heating, 9% of energy consumption. Like thermostats, water heating can be conserved, too - reducing water temperature to 120 degrees, for example, saves up to 18% of total energy use. Low-flush toilets can help reduce energy consumption even more, as they save up to 50% over more old-fashioned commodes.

Going Green with Eco Friendly Office Furniture.

An eco friendly office is easy enough to commit to, if one just sticks to superficial environmental advice (save water! Print on both sides of the paper! Unplug that PC after use!). But it takes a real green warrior to meet environmental targets using eco friendly office furniture.

The government has been helpful enough, providing green furniture standards that provide a standard to live up to. The EPA in particular offers procurement guidelines to help you select eco friendly office furniture that lives up to the government's high standards.

New furniture, then, can be selected using the EPA's guidelines, which call for FSC-certified wood, water-based or bio-based glues for laminated surfaces, and recycled materials where possible.

New eco-friendly office furniture can also be bought based on their recyclability in the future - tables and chairs made of plywood, steel, chipboard, and plastics can be recycled easily at a processing plant, while compact laminates and MDF are more difficult to recycle in the future.

Go refurbished/remanufactured, if that's an option for your office - not easy if you have a reputation to uphold, but getting easier due to the glut of furniture (you can thank the recession for bankrupting a significant number of businesses, freeing their relatively pristine furniture for use in the market).

Take the furniture our guys at Cubicles.com are ready to offer you - lower-cost, recycled workstations recreated from used cubicles - processed with eco-friendly procedures to replace and recycle the parts that can still be used.

Cubicles.com uses low-VOC coatings and recycled fabrics in its remanufactured cubicles. They look brand new, but come having already made most of its impact on the environment!

Buy local. Even if your furniture demands can't live up to the earlier two points, you can still go green with your office furniture, simply by buying from a supplier nearby. By buying local, you cut down on the carbon emissions created by transporting your new furniture from point A to point B.

Green a Go Go: Secrets to Buying Green Office Furniture.

You know the green office furniture trend has hit its stride when even Chinese manufacturers are getting in on the act. For example, the Aurora Group (headquartered in Guangzhou) has conceptualized an "eco office" concept that it's promoting in major Chinese cities.

The showcase for the "eco office" idea is Aurora's X-series chairs, which are made of cloth dyed with EU-certified environment-friendly pigment, and are 80% recyclable.

Which only goes to show that green office furniture is getting much easier to procure. Part of it is due to increased demand: more government agencies are asking for it, more corporations are figuring green office furniture to be a useful PR angle.

So manufacturers have stepped in to fill the need: more furniture on the market is crafted from recycled material, constructed from sustainably harvested resources, and use eco-friendly materials.

Consider remanufactured office furniture, which today comes in practically the same quality as brand new. When old furniture undergoes the remanufacturing process, its metal surfaces are cleaned and repainted (often with low-VOC coatings that limit toxic emissions into the atmosphere), its fabrics are replaced and recycled, and even packaged with recycled material.

Also, recycled materials are making a strong showing in new furniture as well. Recycled fabrics, recycled steel, even recycled soda bottles - these are all weapons in the furniture manufacturer's struggle to lower costs and gain a higher green profile.

Finally, there's sourcing renewable materials, which companies like Herman Miller and the Knoll Group do their best to lead in. The former announced that they were using cherry and walnut wood for their high-end furniture, instead of harder-to-replace woods like mahogany and rosewood. The latter is checking up on its suppliers' sustainable practices and sourcing reclaimed lumber for its product line.

With more customers prioritizing eco-friendliness over lower cost, the furniture industry is responding to a demand for green office furniture that doesn't show any signs of slowing down. (We're surely no slouches in this department - our remanufactured office equipment category is one of Cubicles.com's top sellers.)

Two Contenders for the Ultimate Eco-Friendly Office.

Get beyond the hype of the eco-friendly office, and you'll find a workplace that tries to minimize its own environmental footprint. The ideal green workplace also puts systems in place that encourage their tenants/workers to do the same.

Like many ideals, this is harder than it looks. Very few workplaces meet the gold standard of the ultimate eco-friendly office, usually by meeting the tough standards set by the US Green Buildings Council through their LEED program. Which green offices made the cut?

Architectural firm Perkins + Will constructed their Seattle office with lofty green standards in mind - lighting that's almost 50% more efficient than comparable spaces, water savings of up to 40%, and 80% of building materials sourced within 500 miles of the site.

The office's design is plenty innovative, what you'd expect in a green design pioneer like Perkins + Will - a "solid white box" fixes the office's center, from which the open design studio radiates. The box contains the conference rooms and service spaces; the rest of the office uses natural daylight and open furniture arrangements, all the better to encourage closer work between colleagues.

Perkins + Will's eco-friendly office cost $1 million to build, covering 12,000 square feet in a six-story brick building. It achieved LEED Platinum on October 2006, the first platinum-certified project in Washington State.

Over in San Francisco, Google's Bay area office pulls out all the stops to earn its LEED gold certification. Past the spectacular views of the Bay Bridge, Google's workplace utilizes natural light to decrease energy costs (by making artificial lighting superfluous).

Building waste was minimized, through the re-use of partition walls, door assemblies, and furniture. New material used in construction was mostly sourced from local, sustainable sources.

What was thrown away was recycled - up to 64% of it, by Google's estimate. Efficient water facilities were installed in bathrooms and kitchens. And indoor air quality was preserved by using low-VOC paint, adhesives, furniture, and sealants.

For Google, this kind of attention to detail isn't a fluke - it's company policy. In the following video, an employee chronicles the many steps that Google takes to earn its "ultimate eco-friendly office" stars:

Green Building Template in Hotel Chain's Future.

Green buildings are so mainstream now, even hotel chains are getting into the act. Marriott International revealed an ambitious green hotel portfolio last week, a plan underpinned by a green hotel prototype that is pre-certified LEED-compliant.

The new hotel design will be available in April 2010, implemented on the Courtyard Settler’s Ridge property in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As Marriott learns from the prototype's example, more green hotels will be built as part of a tenfold expansion planned over the next five years.

Marriott claims it can save up to $100,000 in construction expenses, and reduce design time by six months. The green hotels built using the template will use up to a fourth less energy and water compared to the average hotel.

Cool Vespas Resurrected as Office Chairs.

Image © Bel & Bel.

Office furniture that's been around the block doesn't usually generate a lot of consumer demand. But what about office furniture that's been recycled from classic scooters?

Watch out for Spanish design house Bel & Bel's new creations in your local cubicle farm: super-classy hand-made leather office chairs, made primarily from Italian Vespa scooters. The Vespa's front shield creates a perfect silhouette for an office chair back rest - combined with a few key spare parts, these make office chairs that make an incredible visual impact.

Also, given the variety of colors that old Vespas came in, you'll probably find a Vespa chair that suits your office, no problem.

In the old days, Vespa scooters were a symbol of carefree Continental lifestyles, immortalized in movies from the Sixties. But the Vespa's air-cooled two-stroke engine is dirty and bad for the environment; the proliferation of cheap two-stroke cycles around the world accounts for much of the air pollution in developing countries.

"In the cities of many developing countries, the pollution is horrific," says acting director of the Energy Efficiency Center at the University of California at Davis Daniel Sperling. "Two-stroke engines are a big part of the problem."

But Vespa is still tres cool for so many retro-maniacs. Sure, old Vespas kill the Earth a little for every mile they run, but that's no reason to hate them completely, right? So Bel y Bel made the leap from Vespa scooters to office furniture - rejuvenating Vespa retro cool and rehabilitating its polluting former life at the same time.

Recycling Becomes Remembering - Steel from Ground Zero Becomes Part of New Warship.

Image courtesy of the US Navy; public domain.

Sometimes recycling isn't just about being kind to the earth - it's about sanctifying recent history.

Case in point - the USS New York, a San Antonio-class amphibious transport. More than seven tons of steel in its bow stem comes from scrap recycled from the smoldering ruins of Ground Zero, the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.

In the wake of the September attacks, New York Governor George E. Pataki requested that the Navy name one of its ships USS New York, to commemorate the victims of the tragedy.

Junk Mail - Green (Environment) or Green (Money)?

The era of the green office was supposed to bring us more eco-friendly business processes, recycled office furnishings, and smaller footprints overall. But we've yet to find a way to integrate junk mail into the era of the green workplace.

Junk mail is a paradox - more than 40% of junk mail is thrown away unopened, but without junk mail, we'd never be able to afford postal service. Take it from the Postmaster General of the US Postal Service, John Potter -

"Somehow, they think a sale offer coming through the mail — as opposed to a newspaper, a magazine, TV, radio or the Internet — is a bad thing. Ads pay for the Internet, as well as broadcast TV and radio programs," [Potter] said during a speech at the National Press Club. "So, too, ad mail helps pay for universal mail service in America."

Herman Miller: Where Green Manufacturing is Company Tradition.

Herman Miller walks the talk where the green office is concerned.

By 2020, the company plans to minimize solid, air, and water emissions; establish a LEED silver certification for its buildings; use 100% green energy; and sell 100% DfE-approved products.

This builds on a proud Herman Miller company tradition of sustainable design and construction - its headquarters was recognized as one of the first "green" office and manufacturing complexes in the U.S., with corresponding high numbers in employee productivity.

So we're only following in the revered Herman Miller way when we at Cubicles.com offer remanufactured Herman Miller cubicles in our product lineup.

Our remanufactured cubicles look brand-new, but have been painstakingly reconstructed from pre-used Herman Miller cubes; they're engineered to look, feel, and work like the brand-new product!

Just look at the extremes we reach to ensure that our cubicles are made with as little impact to the environment as possible:

Obama, the Green President.

The President of the United States is serious when he says the environment is a top priority of his administration. This week, the President's walking-the-talk on green issues comes through General Motors, and interestingly enough, the White House.

At a GM plant in Ohio, President Obama hailed the new fuel economy standards that would decrease greenhouse gases and provide clear directions for auto designers.

“For too long,” the president told the autoworkers, “our auto companies faced uncertain and conflicting fuel economy standards. That made it difficult for you to plan down the road. That’s why, today, we are launching—for the first time in history—a new national standard aimed at both increasing gas mileage and decreasing greenhouse gas pollution for all new cars and trucks sold in America. This action will give our auto companies some long-overdue clarity, stability, and predictability.”

Efficiency - Green Energy's Ugly Sister.

Efficiency - the other side of green energy - just isn't as sexy. You don't see a lot of celebrities touting efficiency. The few who do (cough cough Ed Begley cough) just aren't that cool.

People think of efficiency along the lines of reasons other than sustainable living. Take electricity conservation - when asked why they reduce electricity consumption, over 72% of the public named cost reduction as their primary reason, says a new study from the Shelton Group.

Only 26% said they had the environment first on their mind. Another 40% mistakenly believed that generating electricity hurt the ozone layer.

A shame, really - over $1.2 trillion in potential savings can be realized by 2020 if the U.S. invests $520 billion in efficiency improvements, if a new McKinsey survey is to be believed.

The McKinsey report cites a number of "success stories" that could serve as models for other national policies. The list includes federal appliance energy-efficiency standards that have saved Americans an estimated $50 billion over 12 years; California's incredible efficiency efforts; and heroic local efforts.

One local effort of particular note finances renewable energy and efficiency improvements by raising property taxes, allowing homeowners to avoid skyrocketing up-front costs.

The California plan works this way: the municipality covers the up-front costs. The homeowner then provides reimbursement through taxes.

Earth Savers Go Pedal-Powered.

Green energy be damned, battery powered cars aren't the only way you can tap energy in an environment-friendly manner. People are getting turned on to the original green energy - the bicycle.

Mother Earth News shows you how you can transform your morning stationary-bike session into an alternative power source - this power-bike can produce 5 to 10 amps of power continuously.

This power-bike's builder isn't the only one - David Butcher sells plans for his power-bike, claiming excellent results (both in terms of calories burned, and energy generated):

The Pedal Generator I ride charges batteries, that run an inverter, that produces 110v AC, that powers LED lights, the monitor on my computer, my cell phones, and charges my Roomba as well as many other small battery-powered things. It is the most inspiring workout you can imagine.

LEED and Green Buildings: A Big Letdown?

A LEED certification is a must-have for a green building, a mark of excellence that any environmentally-conscious builder can leverage into tax credits and bragging rights.

LEED stands for "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design" - its certifications are overseen by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a non-profit organization that is now the country's numero uno watchdog for green and sustainable buildings.

But apparently a "gap between design and construction" is becoming apparent, according to the New York Times' Mireya Navarro:

Solar Panel Price Drop Delights Green Building Contractors.

The New York Times reports that a crucial piece of the green building puzzle just got a lot cheaper:

For solar shoppers these days, the price is right. [Solar] Panel prices have fallen about 40 percent since the middle of last year, driven down partly by an increase in the supply of a crucial ingredient for panels, according to analysts at the investment bank Piper Jaffray.

The price drops — coupled with recently expanded federal incentives — could shrink the time it takes solar panels to pay for themselves to 16 years, from 22 years, in places with high electricity costs, according to Glenn Harris, chief executive of SunCentric, a solar consulting group.

The price drop can be attributed to worldwide increases in solar panel production, coupled with a global drop in demand. Polysilicon, an essential ingredient in solar panels, has increased in availability thanks to more plants making the stuff in China.

Getting a Green Office Makeover: Start Small!

You can't see it from the outside, but the Empire State Building is transforming itself into an eco-friendly building, thanks to a $20 million green office makeover that aims to cut its energy consumption by almost 40%.

By current estimates, its transformation into a green office will reduce the Empire State Building's annual CO2 emissions by some 105,000 metric tons.

That's a major step, considering that the tower's emerald lights on St. Patrick's day were about as green as it normally got before now!

There's a simple objective behind any green office makeover, even one as expansive as the Empire State Building's: reduce the organization's impact on the environment. Awareness is job number one - most organizations aren't even conscious of their massive footprint on Mother Earth.

"We depend on paper, plastic and other materials to communicate and transmit goods," says Annex Brands marketing VP Steve Goble. "Unfortunately, it's all too easy to lose sight of the amount of resources we use when completing these tasks, but by taking a few simple steps, people can greatly reduce excess waste."

Taking steps to a green office could be as simple as recycling paper, using electronics with the Energy Star power feature, switching appliances off at the power source (instead of letting them "sleep", draining even more energy), and installing eco-friendly office lighting.

Green Office Trends

The green office is here to stay, as more office managers realize that going green is more than a conscientious effort to save the planet, it also protects the health of their employees and saves the bottom line.

The green office trend may already be in your workplace, showing up as one or more of these things:

Telepresence. Google uses high tech in deceptively simple ways to minimize its carbon footprint. For example, business travel has been slashed to a bare minimum through the use of videoconferencing, reports the New York Times - not a tiny gesture when you consider that Google has 119 offices all around the world.

“Hundreds of meetings per day are done via videoconference,” says Google project manager Adam Banks. “The technology is primarily about making the company work better, but it has the nice effect of saving on carbon as well.”

Celebrity Green - Julia Stiles Brings It.

While we at Cubicles.com are proud of our remanufactured office cubicles and their raw materials - like the Terratex fabrics we use for our cubicles, made from 100% recycled material using sustainable manufacturing methods - we're not above having a laugh at green marketing that, er, goes off the loopy end.

As far as we can tell, Julia Stiles' tongue-in-cheek "Julia Stiles Styles" video parodies celebrity green bandwagon-jumping: she presents weird green fashion ensembles that even we, green enthusiasts that we are, have trouble embracing.

For our part, we would never steal ideas for our office cubicles from homeless dudes in South America. Not that we're ruling it out.

To Green or Not to Green?

Office spaces these days aspire to be both efficient and environment-friendly… but achieving both takes some doing. Yes, it’s important to make an office more productive, but how can you do that in a greener, more earth-friendly way? How do you furnish your office and boost employee morale, without leaving the planet in the dumpster?

It’s actually easier than you think. Here are ten ways you can have your earth-friendly cake and eat it too, by choosing remanufactured office cubicles:

1. Minimize your impact on the environment with green furniture. Remanufactured office furniture rescues old furnishings from the landfill or the incinerator, minimizing the impact of these items on the environment. Recycled furniture gets taken out of the waste cycle, and placed back on the consumer market. This leads to less waste and fewer pollutants released into the atmosphere.

2. Green furniture is more cost-effective. Remanufactured office furniture looks and performs just like its brand new counterparts; yet offer up to 50% savings compared to new. This leaves you with more funds to allocate to more essential areas of your budget – something you need in a recession-plagued economy!

3. Green furniture is just as good – if not better – than brand new. Modern remanufacturing techniques have raised the bar for remanufactured office furniture. Green furniture is reassembled to match brand new office furniture in both form and function – replacing worn parts and discolored fabrics, refinishing desktops, and repainting panels. The end result is just as good as brand-new in all respects – with the added bonus of knowing you’ve done your part to save the earth!

4. Green furniture increases your use of recycled materials. Office furniture is typically replaced within a period of 10 years, long before any serious wear occurs. This explains the high reusability rate of remanufactured office furniture - more than 85% of the original material makes it into the remanufactured product. The other 15% consists of material recycled from other sources – the new fabrics used by Cubicles.com in their remanufactured cubicles are actually made from recycled plastic bottles.

5. When you buy green furniture, you contribute to a fast-growing sector of the economy. The office furniture remanufacturing industry is a significant sector of the commercial furniture business, earning about $1.2 billion in revenues a year. The business continues to grow, aided by new remanufacturing techniques and a growing supply of raw material. This just goes to show that green furniture isn’t just a worthwhile environmental goal – it’s good business, too.

6. Green furniture offers a constantly expanding product line. The recession has caused an increase in the supply of cubicles on the market, resulting in an increase in both supply and demand for remanufactured office furniture. The choices for conscientious businesses have never been greater, or more affordable.

7. A green office leads to less waste. Remanufactured office furniture extends the life of office furniture, the casualties of a wasteful procurement industry. It’s estimated that U.S. companies buy about 3 million desks, 16.5 million chairs, 4.5 million tables, and 11 million file cabinets a year – with half of this amount reaching the dumpsters at the same time. Remanufactured furniture short-circuits this process – items are spared from a pollution-spewing fate and put back to good use, for less than the cost of buying brand-new furniture.

8. Green furniture is good for your health. Think of all the emissions produced in the manufacture of brand new office furniture – volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are a common byproduct of the furniture making process, contributing to air pollution and extracting an equivalent cost to manufacturers and end-users alike. Green office producers like Cubicles.com use less harmful manufacturing techniques, like using powder-based finishing coats that create less waste and minimize VOC emissions.

9. Green furniture is flexible and grows with your company. Modern cubicles are designed for quick disassembly, and the remanufactured cubicles derived from them are no less flexible. The lower price point attached to these items increases the end-user’s latitude for choice, enabling them to pursue more ambitious solutions with a smaller budget at hand.

10. Using recycled furniture advertises your company's commitment to corporate responsibility. There’s great cachet in being the first business on your block to embrace green office furnishing practices – this gives you a great talking point for clients, and also provides a foothold for increased office morale. After all, isn’t it wonderful to work for a company that serves a greater purpose than just the bottom line?

"Clean and Green" makes headway in office furnishing

If you think “doing green business” is just a passing fashion, you’ve got another think coming – green trends have created a $227 billion a year marketplace for sustainable products and services, a figure estimated to hit the $1 trillion mark by 2020.

This is a large (and growing) market - and their clout is making itself felt in the $10-billion-dollar office furniture industry. Increasing attention is being paid to how the process of creating office furniture impacts the environment.

For example, the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released during the production process may contribute to air pollution and health problems down the road.

Also, the average 10-year lifespan of office furniture raises concerns that a great volume of furnishings are sent to the landfills long before they’re due.

As a result, remanufactured furniture is looking better and better. New techniques in refurbishing office furniture create a whole new world of possibilities for environment-conscious companies.

Remanufacturing companies take previously used cubicles and other office furniture, replace the fabrics and work surfaces, and reassemble them again, the end result costing up to 70% less than equivalent brand-new furniture. A whole office can be remodeled this way, at a fraction of the cost of using new cubicles.

Cubicles.com’s line of cubicles takes this idea of value engineering for the earth’s sake and runs with it. By sticking to a simple yet all-encompassing philosophy of reducing, reusing, and recycling as much as possible from the original material, Cubicles.com manages to reuse up to 85% of the source into its remanufactured furniture.

Cubicles.com offers a wide range of pre-owned models sourced from respected brands like Herman Miller, Knoll & Steelcase. The look, feel, and function are almost indistinguishable from brand-new cubicles – you wouldn’t even know it was remanufactured, green furniture if you weren’t told it was.

Saving the earth isn’t just a feel-good platitude; it’s good business. As more workers wake up to the impact their enterprises are making on the Earth, companies like Cubicles.com are stepping up to help them do their part for the environment, and save big in the process.

Green Office

Green Office text