Eco-friendly office design is on the rise with lots of employees moving back into the office more regularly, businesses are looking for ways to save on rising costs as well as do their bit to be as eco-friendly as possible and protect the future of our planet.

Eco-friendly offices have a reputation for being costly because it requires additional planning and sourcing of more ‘unusual’ materials. However, this isn’t always the case. While sustainable design may come with a higher upfront price tag, it can save your business significant amounts in the long run.

Select More Efficient Materials

Material efficiency is crucial to any green office. This means selecting materials that are more sustainable, both for the exterior and interior. This can include using more natural materials, such as wood, reusing old materials or selecting materials that are made from a high level of recycled content.

For one of our projects in Berkshire, we selected carpet made from recycled fishing nets, obtained from suppliers involved in an imaginative initiative, in partnership with the Zoological Society of London. The scheme is designed to tackle the growing environmental problem of discarded fishing nets in some of the world’s poorest coastal communities, while also providing a source of income for the local people that collect them.

Optimise Lighting

According to Architecture Now, workers in office environments with natural sunlight noted a 15% increased level of wellbeing, were 61% more productive and 15% more creative in their work environment. We consider the use of daylight when creating spaces to make them healthy and to improve physical and mental wellbeing. By combining good daylight provision into your workspace, this can make significant energy savings as well as improvements to employee wellbeing.

Insulation and Air Conditioning

Adding insulation can lead to a significant reduction of power that’s required in the office, leading you to make drastic savings in the rising cost of heating bills. With the addition of insulation, this can increase energy efficiency by as much as 40%! This is particularly important for warehouses, where we ensure that offices and staff areas are insulated, so as not to waste money heating the whole warehouse. We can also install Heat Recovery air conditioning systems, which provide fresh filtered air by recovering normally wasted heat, which can reduce building heating costs by 40 to 50 per cent.

Renewables

Most commercial buildings waste an average of 30% of the energy they use. Another way to save energy is to integrate renewables into buildings, minimising carbon emissions beyond what can be achieved by efficiency measures alone. One of the more common forms of renewable technology is Solar PV panels, which convert natural light into electrical energy, providing a more environmentally friendly, and economically friendly way to generate electricity.