All of use want to save money, but how can you be ‘green’ at work too? Below are simple ways to save money at work with the environment in mind.

1. Pack your own meals

Making your own meals saves money and improves your health. Pack nutritious and budget friendly meals in reusable containers, bring utensils from home and cloth napkins. Whether its a sandwich, soup, salad or leftovers, making your own meals will become an easy habit to save money, eat healthy and reduce waste. Stop spending money on your daily morning latte, bring your own travel coffee mug and make coffee at work.

2. Carpool with co-workers

Ask around the office, create a carpool network. Carpooling not only saves money, but is an easy way to reduce CO2 emissions and combat climate change.

3. Bring your own water bottle

Now you no longer need to buy expensive bottled water, just bring your own. Choose one that is BPA free, preferably aluminum. Klean Kanteen makes BPA free, aluminum water bottles. If you are worried about the purity of your water, ask your employer to install a faucet water filter or put a Brita pitcher in the fridge at work.

4. Energy Saver Setting on Computer

Today, most computers provide an energy saving setting. By choosing this setting, computers will automatically ‘sleep’ when not in use. Also remember to turn your computer off when you leave work everyday. The EPA recommends, “Setting computers to enter system standby or hibernate after 30 to 60 minutes of inactivity. To save even more, set monitors to enter sleep mode after 5 to 20 minutes of inactivity. The lower the setting, the more energy you save.”

5. Switch light bulbs

LED or compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) last up to 10 times longer and use less energy. By doing this, your work will cut down on light bulb replacement costs, use less energy and save money. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, “An ENERGY STAR qualified compact fluorescent light bulb will save about $30 over its lifetime and pay for itself in about 6 months. It uses 75 percent less energy and lasts about 10 times longer than an incandescent bulb.”

6. Decrease paper margins and always print double-sided

By simply reducing paper margins from 1.25″ to 0.75″ will allow more words to fit on each sheet of paper, reducing the amount of paper and ink costs. Just simply adjust the document margins and save paper, ink and money. Also, remember to print double-sided. Western Washington University did this and significantly reduced printing costs.