CONSERVATION AND THE WORKPLACE

Many persons have been responding to the Conservation articles that the Consumer Affairs Commission has been putting out recently. In one specific call the question was raised… “Whose responsibility is it to conserve at the workplace?” Or for that matter whose responsibility is it to conserve at the church or at the school?
In the last article we pointed out the connection between water and energy and the importance of conserving water as part of your energy conservation strategy at home. Householders have a vested interest in cutting costs and saving energy at their private homes. The choice is clear, either reduce wastage and save money or waste it and pay for it.
But at the workplace no one person is responsible. So the leaky tap is not my problem, nor is it your problem. In discussing this article in the Commission's office, the issue of personal hygiene came up. The point raised was that persons do not want to touch pipes or toilet handles of public bathrooms. So if the pipe is on, they will wash their hands and leave it running. This is an expensive practice for the organization or the company and ultimately the nation's energy bill. A leaky faucet can waste up to 3000 gallons of water in a year. Imagine a pipe left running! A leaking or running toilet will waste as much as 200 litres of water in one day!

Act Responsibly
In such cases persons are part of an extended group within the organization or church. Therefore, the collective responsibility of each member of that group, organization or church is to protect the common lot of that group. If someone scorns the pipe handle in the bathroom at the church, then alert the relevant person and call a plumber. The same applies at the office and could see a company paying out untold amount of wasted resources over a year. It is therefore advisable for larger companies to use water saving faucets; the initial expense of a set of pipes that will turn off automatically when not in use would be worth it in the long run.

Automatic Driers
Automatic driers that shut off once the user moves away is another must have in rest rooms of larger companies, as these hot air blowers utilize a significant amount of electricity, as does your hand held blow drier or especially the table top hair driers. The kitchen of many workplaces is another likely source of energy misuse. Lets look at the electric kettle in the office kitchen. It is more energy efficient to full the kettle and boil it once near the time for coffee break than for each employee boiling a single cup of water for his or her tea/coffee.
Again, this is not a home or family setting, so employees are likely to think only of themselves and not the other persons using the kitchen, but if persons begin to understand and display collective responsibility this could quickly change.

Those Computer Screen Savers
Another potential source of energy over consumption are those screensavers that everyone wants on their monitor at the office. Monitors consume 40% of the energy used by a computer. While the screen saver is on, the monitor is still on and is wasting energy, the best thing to do is to just turn off the monitor (without shutting down the computer) as you move away from your work station. All screensavers use electricity and the more fancy the screensaver, the more energy is wasted and the higher the electricity bill of the company or organization. Instead of using screen savers, programme the computer to power itself off after a brief period (two or three minutes) of inactivity. If you are leaving your workstation for lunch, then shut down the computer completely.
Photocopiers and all electronic office equipment can usually be set to sleep when not in use. Using these features for printers, photocopiers and computers could save as much as 40% off the electricity bill of the company, especially if everyone display collective responsibility.

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