Environmental pet peeves at the office

Are you that guy? You know, the one who prints 100 single-sided pages of your budding novel on the office computer? Or the woman who never turns off her office light? Turns out those are two of American office workers’ biggest environmental pet peeves, according to a recent survey of 1,569 Canadian and U.S. office workers conducted by Harris Interactive for Xerox Corp.

1) Mindless printing resulting in increased waste (40 percent)

2) Leaving lights on (37 percent)

3) Lack of recycling bins (33 percent)

4) Excessive air conditioning in summer and heat in winter (29 percent)

5) Excessive use of paper products, like cups, plates, etc. (27 percent)

6) Co-workers not recycling (27 percent)

7) Co-workers not printing double-sided when they can (24 percent)

8) Too many cover sheets when faxing or printing (24 percent)

9) Having to store paper copies of existing, electronic files (24 percent)

10) Leaving the computer on and not powering down when going home (23 percent)

Patricia A. Calkins, vice president of Environment, Health and Safety at Xerox, suggested that office workers set office printers to ‘default to two-sided printing, which cuts office paper use in half. Or, replace single-function printers and copiers with multifunction systems, decreasing energy use.”