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September 2007 — Vol. 85, No. 7
Workers want employers to be
eco-friendly, but do little to help
By leaving eco-friendly habits at home, U.S. workers waste an estimated
$4.3 billion a year in energy costs
A new poll commissioned by Sun Microsystems Inc. and conducted by Harris Interactive shows that U.S. workers want to work for socially and environmentally responsible companies. But many workers are not doing simple things to help their employers conserve energy, such as turning off lights and computers when they are done using them. The study also found that employees are using some energy-saving measures at home but are not taking those same good habits to work with them.
If the percentage of America’s 81.1 million office workers who are not turning off lights and computers at work took their energy-conscious behaviors to work with them, Sun estimates that those workers could achieve the equivalent of taking 6.1 million cars off the road in aggregate CO2 emissions.
Conducted in June, the survey polled 1,741 U.S. employees ages 18 to 54 who work for companies of 25 employees or more. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of workers said they strongly or somewhat agree that it is important to them that their employer is an environmentally and socially responsible company. However, only 52% of workers turn off the light when they leave a room at work. When asked what they do at home, 92% said they do in fact turn off the lights in their residence. When asked about computers, 58% said they turn off computers at home when they are done using them, compared with a mere 34% at work. Another key finding was that 57% of workers use “sleep” mode for their home computers so that the system will go into an energy-saving state if not touched for a set amount of time. Only 44% do this at work.
“Businesses don’t cut power consumption — people do,” said Dave Douglas, vice president of eco responsibility at Sun Microsys-tems. If you’re an employer, he suggests “communicating [to employees] about the issue and how everyone can benefit by taking small steps. The good news is that your employees care about the environment, but they may need your help in realizing how much they can actually make a difference.”
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