Managing the Environment

Green Procurement and Green Office

To support green procurement, the Government expanded the list of green products commonly used by bureaux and departments in 2011. Particularly, all bureaux and departments are encouraged, as far as feasible and where economically rational, to preferentially purchase products with green specifications and avoid one-off disposable items. Our Department has actively supported the Government's initiatives on green procurement. We have purchased a wide variety of products following the green procurement specification in 2012-13, ranging from electrical appliances such as computers, copying machines, printers, electric fans and refrigerators to office consumables including recycled paper, correction tapes, pencils, rechargeable batteries, toilet paper and garbage bags.

Over the years, we have implemented a number of energy saving measures in our office. These include setting the room temperature at 25.5 degree Celsius, de-lamping unnecessary lights, installing timers to switch off common office equipment after office hours. To keep our office green, we have adopted the principles of waste reduction and resource conservation. In addition to implementing guidelines on reducing the use of paper, we encourage our staff to reuse envelopes. We have also set up recycling stations to collect cartridge toners, rechargeable batteries, papers, plastic and metal containers. To further raise the awareness amongst our staff, we have regularly disseminated green tips and conducted environmental inspections in our workplace.

With the fast development of wireless communication technology, we have introduced a "paperless meeting" system, using electronic gadgets such as tablet computers and notebooks for presentations and discussions. About 252 paperless meetings were conducted in 2012-13 with 1,900- plus e-documents circulated and viewed through this system. Together with other green measures such as electronic circulation and doublesided printing, paper consumption has continued to drop since 2009-10. Paper usage in 2012-13 was about 11,000 reams, a 21 per cent reduction compared to 2009-10.

Paper Consumption