One of the major trends in modern office designs is that they’re all about sustainability. As more people continue to spotlight eco-friendly products and lifestyles, our office spaces have begun to follow suit. Here are three of the ways that eco-friendly designs, and specifically eco-friendly manufacturing practices, are influencing the workplace.

An Emphasis on Eco-Friendly Office Furniture

Every office space is going to be full of furniture. Desks, couches, chairs, cabinets; the list goes on. Unfortunately, according to an article on Inc.com, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claims that “8.5 million tons of office furniture finds its way into landfills every year.” 

However, the growing accessibility and popularity of eco-friendly manufacturing has opened the door for countless companies to start their own sustainability initiatives. One of the more popular ways this has manifested in the workplace is through sustainable furniture.

You can’t have an office space without furniture, and it doesn’t make sense to promote an eco-friendly office design if the furniture you fill it with will end up contributing to the statistic above. 

“Sustainable may have started out as a buzzword,” Inc.com says, “but today it's a cornerstone of ecologically friendly thinking. You want to work with manufacturers who think sustainably, too.” So, when you’re considering the different options available to you and your modern office designs, look into sustainable furniture and help set a new, environmentally friendly precedent for the workplace.

Going Digital

Eco-friendly manufacturing is sending ripples across countless industries and exposing people to the benefits of an environmentally friendly outlook—not just in manufacturing, but everywhere in the business. If you were going to implement a modern office design that makes use of sustainably made furniture, for example, wouldn’t it make sense to embrace that eco-friendly mindset in other ways, too?

This is why so many companies are embracing digital paperwork. While printers and physical documents will never go away, there are plenty of ways to cut down on the amount of paper your office uses on a day-to-day basis. Entrepreneur offers a few ideas:

• Decrease the number of printers you keep in the office
• Start using paperless statements
• Get rid of those fax machines
• Implement a digital signature policy

Energy-Efficient Lighting

It’s no secret that office buildings consume a lot of energy. It may not be possible to stop using energy entirely, but it is possible to cut down on how much of it your office needs on a given day. 

For example, instead of keeping the lights on all day long, why not take a page from the eco-friendly manufacturing handbook and either rely on natural light—which can have physical and mental health benefits for employees—or swap out your traditional light bulbs with some eco-friendly alternatives.

Not all modern office designs have the best windows, though. Sometimes your window may be looking out at a parking lot, and while it lets in that beautiful sunshine, the view can be distracting. This is where office window graphics like LINTEC’s ECO-2000 ZC can help.

With incredibly high-optical clarity, long-term reliability, and one-piece removability, this product can be fully customized to match any office aesthetic or style and won’t take away from that all-important sunlight. It’s also one of the ways LINTEC takes part in eco-friendly manufacturing practices, as the facestock is made out of no less than 80% recycled material.

Modern office designs are always changing, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing! With eco-friendly manufacturing more accepted than ever, you can outfit your existing office—or design an entirely new one—in a way that’s visually beautiful and creatively inspiring but also environmentally friendly.