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Health & Fitness

Sustainable Industries Green Office Guide

Sustainable Industries Green Office Guide and the Shoreline Green Business Program offer tools for doing an assessment and making changes to save businesses money and reduce environmental impact.

Want to know how to create your own sustainability plan so you can effectively reduce costs and environmental impacts? The “Green Office Guide” offered by Sustainable Industries offers guidelines for getting started and staying on track.

There is a lot of advertising in the guide that can be distracting from the core information, but even the ads have helpful ideas and strategies.

There are many resources under each topic mentioned in the report including:

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  • "Self Assessment Tool" called Eco-Eval put together by the North American Green Purchasing Initiative Commission for Environmental Cooperation.
  • National Resources Defense Council "Green Advisor" a detailed guide that provides information on air quality improvement, paper and energy reduction information, and more.
  • Openeco.com a global online community that provides free tools to help organizations assess, track and compare energy performance, and share best practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
  • Global Reporting Initiative The world's most widely used sustainability reporting framework, the initiative helps businesses and organizations measure their social, environmental and economic performance.

Some of the links listed are not active, but are easily found with a Google search of the topic.

Purchasing habits are divided into subtopics:

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  • Paper
  • Printing
  • Office Supplies
  • Technology
  • Vehicles
  • Furnishings
  • Cleansing Supplies
  • Food
  • Carob Offsets & Green Power
  • Meetings
  • Event Planning

Once a business has a baseline assessment with help from the Green Office Guide the Shoreline Green Business Questionnaire can be used as a reference for specific actions to reduce costs and environmental impacts. The Shoreline Green Business Program also offers certification, which businesses can use in their advertising.

To become certified with the Shoreline Green Business program:

  • Register on the Shoreline Green Business website
  • Complete the questionnaire online
  • A volunteer will contact you for a site visit to verify what steps have been taken and determine if there are other resources that the business can benefit from

Once accepted as a "Green Business" based on the provided documentation a pdf file of the Shoreline Green Business Logo and a sticker will be made available.
Arrangements can also be made for posting a web link and a write up on the Shoreline Green Business website.

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