Enhancing the environmental performance of our territorywide facilities is a crucial part of the environmental management strategy. Apart from this, we also engage our staff and suppliers to protect the environment in various ways, such as promoting green culture and green procurement.
Green Procurement and Green Office
To support green procurement, the Government expanded the list of products with green specifications commonly used by bureaux and departments in 2011. All bureaux and departments are encouraged to, as far as feasible and where economically rational, preferentially purchase products with green specifications and avoid one-off disposable items. DSD has actively supported the Government’s initiatives on green procurement. In 2013-14, we have purchased a wide variety of products in accordance with the green procurement specification. These products ranged 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.
Provision of potted plants in conference room
Over the years, we have implemented a number of energy saving initiatives in our offices. 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, etc.
To keep our office green, we have also adopted measures related to waste reduction and resource conservation. In addition to implementing guidelines on reducing paper use, we encourage our staff to reuse envelopes. We have also set up recycling stations to collect cartridge toners, rechargeable batteries, paper, plastic and metal containers. To further enhance awareness amongst our staff, we have regularly disseminated green tips and conducted environmental inspections for our workplace.
To promote healthy and low carbon life style, we encourage colleagues to choose vegetarian dishes for lunch on Mondays. Moreover, small potted plants were put in conference rooms to provide greener environment and cleaner air for staff and visitors.
With the fast development of wireless communication technology, we have introduced a “paperless meeting” system, using electronic devices such as tablet computers and notebooks for presentations and discussions at meetings. About 300 paperless meetings were conducted in 2013-14 with more than 2,700 documents circulated and viewed through this system. Together with other green measures, such as electronic circulation and double-sided printing, DSD’s paper consumption has been constantly decreasing since 2009-10. Our paper consumption in 2013-14 was about 10,500 reams, i.e. about 25 per cent reduction as compared with 2009-10.
"Go Green Mondays" website on DSD intranet
Total Paper Consumption (Ream)
Paper Consumption per Staff (Ream)
