How to Make Your Office Kitchen More Green

Make Your Office Kitchen Greener & More Sustainable

We’ve spoken a lot about biophilic workspaces, and how greenery in the workplace can positively impact productivity and motivation. It seems only right that this leafy green trend carries through to the office kitchen. It’s a space for employees to rest, recuperate, and refresh during their days in the office, so why not think about making it more sustainable, vegetation-filled and enjoyable for everyone.

Plants

Not only do plants serve as lush, green decor for your kitchen, they can also help purify air and increase humidity. If you’re in an office with particularly powerful air conditioning, this could be the perfect solution. Plants will help add moisture to the air in your kitchen and help keep cold and flu spread by your air-con at bay.

If you’re thinking of testing your green fingers in your office kitchen, try the following plants. If you’re notoriously bad for keeping plants alive, these ones should be relatively hard for you to kill!

Ivy – Ivy hangs nicely and is very easy to grow indoors as long as it gets some direct sunlight, meaning you have to spend minimal time nurturing it to get results. You can find Ivy in several different shades of green, black and yellow so pick the tone most suited to your workplace. Ivy is also well known for purifying the air. This alongside its ability to reduce mould and bacteria make it the perfect office kitchen plant.

Aloe Vera – For those of us who don’t have green fingers, aloe vera is a brilliant choice. The plant is renowned for being hard to kill. Perfect! As well as being visually pleasing, aloe vera also contains an all-natural gel that is incredibly soothing for cuts or burns, making it ideal to have in the kitchen.

Jasmine – If you’re worried about lighting candles in the workplace (hello sensitive smoke detectors), a jasmine plant could provide the perfect solution. Though they require slightly more care and attention than the previous two plants we’ve mentioned, they smell divine. Place them in your office kitchen and the odour of people’s lunches will soon be replaced with the floral scent.

Recycling

Another way to make your office kitchen is greener and more sustainable is through recycling. Food can come in lots of packaging, so making sure you have both food waste bins and recycling bins is essential. All excess cardboard, plastic, paper bags and coffee cups should be recycled properly.

If the recyclable materials are covered in food, they need to be rinsed or cleaned. This is so that they do not soil the rest of the recycling items. For example, yoghurt pots need to be rinsed out before they are recycled, so ensure your workforce know this.

For those who are keen to improve their stance on recycling, think about getting a segregated bin. One section for normal waste, one for recycling and one for food waste. This way, if space is at a premium in your workplace, you won’t be wasting it by having multiple bins.

Sustainable Materials

Reducing the amount of plastic in your workspace will help our business transition towards sustainability. Try and look for materials like cork, wood or wicker for your office kitchen instead.

Wicker baskets can help keep food organised, and means everybody can have their own section in the cupboard. Cork boards can make great notice boards for the kitchen space. Plus, they mean you don’t have to have a plastic whiteboard with plastic pens too.

Try and use wooden drying racks for plates and cutlery, and use either metal or china crockery, as opposed to single-use plastic. This will mean everybody will have to wash up, but it also means far less plastic will be used!