The three Rs at work

• By
• Emma Carscadden

Image by Emma Carscadden

Guest blogger series:

Crawling Toward Sustainability

This is the sixth in a series of guest blog posts in which Emma will track the progress of her office to become more sustainable. Next up, the staff add trees to their office renovation scheme.

Pretty much everything happens on paper in an architect’s office. So we go through a lot of paper at BCA. 8 ½ x 11, 11 x 17, truly massive drawing sets—you name it, we’ve got it. And like many offices, nearly all of our paper use is temporary. A quick proofread and a few notes, then it’s off to the recycling bin.

Urban Impact comes once a month and carts our paper away, and every year we get a nifty certificate telling us how good to the earth we are. In 2008, we “diverted 12 cubic yards of recycled material from landfill, or a volume that would fill six full-sized pick-up trucks”! The certificate is also an unofficial carbon credit, saying that we sequestered 2 tonnes of carbon emissions by recycling our six trucks of paper.
 

Recycling office paper may be 2 tonnes of carbon offset good, but it is not the be all and end all of office environmentalism. Recycling doesn’t give us carte blanche to blow through virgin, bleached paper. We’ve got to reduce and reuse, too.

We started reducing significantly last year when we leased a new copier/printer/scanner that does everything double-sided. Double-sided printing nearly halved our paper consumption with zero effort. While I don’t have any hard numbers, our receptionist and office supply whiz Katherine says she orders noticeably less paper than before the magic copier arrived.

We are reusing—albeit indirectly—by switching to recycled paper. Most of our office supplies come from local greenies Frog File. The Grays Harbor paper they offer is acid- and chlorine-free and made with 40 or 100 percent post-consumer waste. As an added bonus, Frog File sources products as locally as possible to cut down on shipping emissions. Gray Harbor’s mill is in Washington State and is a family-run business.

Becoming a paper-free office, while easily suggested, really isn’t feasible for most offices. Most stuff just needs to be on paper! But with all of the dirty work done for us by the paper company, the photocopier and the recycling company, making a commitment to the Three Rs at work is pretty easy.

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bruce carscadden ARCHITECT inc is a boutique architecture and planning firm, based in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside since 2000. Specializing in recreation, institutional and commercial projects for public and private clients, BCA is committed to producing beautiful and thoughtful buildings, and finding green and sustainable solutions within a client’s budget. Almost everyone rides a bike to work.

Emma Carscadden is the promotions and marketing assistant at BCA, and writes proposals, submissions and copy for the website. She’s also in charge of setting up the office’s worm composter.