Will businesses that are beginning to alternate their business office environment into a more eco-friendly surrounding really be benefiting to the business itself? Is technology always beneficial in helping to save the environment?
These are just two common questions that many businesses are facing. I’ve been wondering about this for a few weeks now. It seems that everywhere I go, I see some new kind of way of protecting the environment. In business offices, larger business buildings, movie theaters, and even stores, it is common for the restrooms to have the automatic toilet flusher where the toilet has a sensor and flushes automatically. In positive ways, this method is more sanitary and much more convenient. However, I also wondered if there were any negative affects of this automatic toilet flusher. I looked it up and came up with this: Sometimes the sensor automatically flushes when there’s any sort of movement. This wastes the electricity running the automatic flusher and the water whenever the sensor senses something and flushes repeatedly. According to Green Prophet, “this product is a perfect example of where people’s needs conflict with the environment, but then again it’s the balance that’s important”.
The automatic toilet flusher is a simple example that is sometime seen by the general public as an “environmental friendly” product, but instead its function wastes natural resources such as water and energy in the form of electricity. A resourceful article found on GreenBiz.com states five different points explaining how going green helps maintain a business and why it helps in the long run.
Basically, it seems to be all about a “sustainability strategy” that mirrors a business that grows alongside its environmental goals, meaning that adding a focus on becoming environmental friendly will help the business itself. This is really interesting because I would think that it takes time, effort, and money to produce and follow a sustainability goal. GreenBiz notes that as government regulations are imposed on these businesses, there will be an even greater need for these businesses to seek new ways to develop an environmental business surrounding. Additionally, energy bills are also increasing, so a new way of conserving energy would be very profitable to the office environment. GreenBiz adds how many times younger generation of workers create new innovations that continue to bring up new ideas or systems to protect our natural resources. Similar to the amount of water and electricity the automatic flusher wastes, it’s reasonable to come up with news ways of incorporating the environmental-friendly products into the office environment.
Although many of these reasons apply more to smaller and middle-sized companies, it’s still important for all types of businesses because our views are changing and we can already see changes going on in different businesses around the world. Whether it’s changing the theme of the business to a greener theme or changing smaller aspects of the business such as energy-saving lightbulbs, the change will begin a trend that may change the world over a short period of time.
The images below show a different type of eco-friendly architecture compared to what we’re used to seeing. The first is an image showing the interior of this “green-architecture” office building. We can see that half of the building depends on natural light from the sun. The second image shows a different angle of how the building looks from the outside. The building uses natural energy to light the room and glass walls so that these office workers inside the building can experience the natural world around them.
Planet EcoBusiness 