Today is World Environment Day! Occurring every year on June 5th, World Environment Day is the primary effort by the United Nations to raise awareness about protecting the environment. In celebration, here are four simple ways to protect the environment that can be implemented in any organization.

1. Start the conversation

Is there a platform your company uses to communicate? Start a channel for eco-friendly tips and updates about anything the company is already doing. This starts the conversation and gets the whole organization involved. At Samanage, we created the #gogreen channel in Slack to come up with ideas we can all use such as scraping dishes into the trash instead of pre-rinsing them before they go into the dishwasher – according to the EPA, this can save up to 20 gallons of water per month!

2. Go as paperless as possible

From newspapers and magazines to paying bills and depositing checks, almost everything is available digitally. Why not extend it into your organization? Keep excessive paper out of the office by going digital. Hopefully you’ve already abandoned IT tickets on sticky notes, but there are plenty of other ways to go digital in the office. At Samanage we have stopped one-time use printing in the G&A Department, switched all printers to auto print two sided, and have promoted the use of Slack and Google docs sharing to all managers to use instead of printing.

3. Buy eco-friendly products

There are eco-friendly products everywhere – recyclable batteries, pens, and paper, to name a few. At Samanage we use all of the above as well as eco-friendly dish detergent, hand wash, and a Lavit water cooler with 100% recyclable EcoCaps.

4. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Properly dispose of anything the organization doesn’t need. Stop purchasing unnecessary items that take up space like sticky notes, office files, or index cards. Get rid of disposable items and replace them with reusable ones (i.e. dishware). Finally, recycle/repurpose or donate office furniture, old marketing swag, or old monitors and replace them with eco-friendly, reused, or low-energy options.

World Environment Day is an important day to reflect on what we can do to protect the environment. However, in order to truly make an impact, it’s important to carry that reflection with you everyday. These four ways will get you started, but find a good place to have the conversation in your company. Whether it’s on Slack, email, or at the coffee machine, it starts with raising awareness so your organization can start protecting the environment everyday.