Going Natural In The Office

After our homes, our workplaces are the environment in which we spend the most amount of time – sometimes, it seems as if we spend most of our time in the office, full stop. So it’s just as important to minimize the amount of toxins you have in your office as it is in your home.

Unfortunately, there is not a lot you can do about the commercial cleaning products that the janitor or professional office cleaner is going to use when they nip around your cubicle or office space doing their job. This probably means various disinfectants and ammonia based products as well as damp dusters and vacuum cleaners.

Unless your office has rather progressive notions about living and working naturally and encourages the cleaner to use vinegar and baking soda to clean everything, trying to get your office cleaner to switch to natural cleaning products is going to be a waste of time. If you are serious about reducing toxins in your environment, you could have a quiet talk to the cleaner and offer to take care of your cubicle yourself using natural products in cleaning services. He or she will probably agree to this – it’s one less area they have to do. If you are very keen, you could try proposing switching to purchasing, for example, Enjo cleaning cloths for the cleaner as a cost cutting measure – the business won’t have to pay for all those chemicals used for cleaning… It’s worth a try, anyway!

The next best thing you can do to reduce the amount of toxins in your working environment is to put toxin absorbing plants in your cubicle or office. Spider plants and peace lilies are two varieties of plant that are particularly good at absorbing environmental pollutants (and they are thought to absorb some of the e-smog or electromagnetic frequencies put out by all that electrical office equipment). Other plants that remove environmental pollutants and look good include English ivy, weeping fig and areca palm.

Don’t use plastic cups or plastic bottles for your drinks at the office. Yes, it’s important to stay well hydrated and water is by far the best drink (meeting people at the water cooler also helps reduce stress levels), but you don’t have to use the plastic cups (or even paper cups) provided. Sometimes, toxins can leach from the plastic into the water you drink – to say nothing of hot drinks, as heat makes more toxins leach out. Take your own china mug and re-use it through the day (and take it home at night with you to wash, of course!).

You might not be able to stop other people using that ghastly chemical-laden air freshener in the office loo, but this doesn’t mean that you have to use it as well. Good ventilation in the lavatory will help remove any smells, or take a box of matches in with you and light one before you leave. The little flame from the match will burn the methane that creates the worst stink, so your co-workers will have nothing to complain about. An option that could be proposed as a cost-cutting measure is a stainless steel “Smell Killer”. Apparently, these little stainless steel disks neutralise or absorb odours somehow.

If you can bag a desk near a window, or if you have an office to yourself, make the most of fresh air and natural lighting instead of canned air and fluorescent air. You’ll feel better for it and will work better.

Talk to people face to face or leave sticky notes instead of using instant messengers, text messages and emails for intra-office communications. This will reduce the amount of electromagnetic radiation you and your co-workers are exposed to. And to save adding extra paper in the form of sticky notes to the waste stream, do your own recycling and use GOOS (good on one side) paper.

Don’t buy food from the office canteen. It is probably not the healthiest option, and you don’t have any control over the ingredients used. It’s better for your health – and a lot cheaper – to make your own sandwiches or pack leftovers from last night’s dinner and eat that for lunch instead. As a timesaver, make a large batch of sandwiches and freeze them in zip-lock bags (which you can wash out and re-use rather than throwing away). Then all you need to do is grab a frozen pack of sandwiches as you head out the door – it will have thawed out nicely by lunchtime.