You may be tempted to think that you are doing your fair share to help the planet by working from home because you do not have to commute to get to your workplace every day. While it is true that you may be driving less than people who work outside the home, ditching the daily commute is not the only action that you can take to do right by the environment.
One way in which you can minimize your environmental impact while working from home is to be mindful of electricity and heating/cooling system usage. Are you heating the whole house all day while you are only spending time in one or two rooms? Most homes have programmable thermostats that you can set in such a way that you can heat and cool your home only where and when it is needed. Also, you can always manually adjust thermostats so you can turn down the heat if you know you will not be in certain parts of the house for most of the day. Of course, the classic “turn off the light when you leave the room” suggestion never goes out of style, and the same goes for computers, televisions, radios, and other appliances.
Are your office supplies as ecologically friendly as they could be? Try printing on paper with recycled content and refilling your printer’s ink cartridges or buying recycled cartridges. Don’t forget to send back the empty cartridges for recycling. White and mixed paper are some of the easiest things to recycle, so be sure to place recycling bins in convenient locations in your home office so that you will use them regularly.
These suggestions are just the tip of the iceberg. You can probably identify additional opportunities for environmental stewardship for your particular home based business. How do you keep your home based business green?