What Defines A Sustainable Office?

 Tips from CANOPY—A Carbon-Positive, B Corp-certified coworking space.

Sustainability benchmarks vary enormously across industries, and it can be challenging to identify whether an office or workspace environment meets your individual or company standards. Power utilization, waste, human resources turnover, and staff commutes are all factors you might consider when determining how sustainable a company is. 

Sustainability has been a core pillar of CANOPY coworking and private office spaces since 2016, when we opened our first space in SF’s Pacific Heights neighborhood. After expanding into three more locations, in 2023, CANOPY became a certified B CorporationTM. We also became carbon positive, removing more carbon from the atmosphere than is generated by our Members and our operations combined.

Achieving these standards engaged CANOPY’s entire team at every. Here, we share our tips for evaluating the sustainability of your workspace. 

Offset Your Carbon Footprint

Human activity is causing the climate to change at an alarming rate, and to prevent the worst possible subsequent outcomes, businesses must do their part to reduce their carbon footprint. Management practices for operations, supply chain, and distribution channels can impact the air, climate, water, land, and biodiversity. On average, every office worker contributes approximately one carbon tonne a year. 

To continue to be carbon positive, CANOPY partners with the diversified carbon portfolio platform CNaught to purchase high-quality offsets designed to maximize impact, mitigate risk, and foster innovation. Most of our spaces are fueled by 100% renewable wind and solar energy through Clean Power SF. Additionally, our team offsets all business travel to override our flight emissions.

Since 2019, CANOPY has have offset 2,671 tonnes of CO2e. That’s equivalent to: 

  • 594 cars off the road for a year
  • 9,564 flights from LA to NY
  • 44,148 new trees planted. 

Learn more about our carbon offset portfolio on our website.

Minimize Waste

An office can produce an alarming amount of trash. Buying in bulk, minimizing printed documents, and opting for digital file systems whenever possible will reduce waste and recycling. You can also ban bottling water in favor of reusable bottles and central fountains and purchase bulk tea, coffee, and bathroom amenities. 

As technology evolves and you upgrade to more efficient devices, you can direct all e-waste  E-waste—cell phones, computers, printers, batteries, ink cartridges, cables, and CDs—to recycling programs. As part of your waste management plans, try enforcing the collection of organic waste in recycling programs to divert more waste from landfill. 

All CANOPY shared office spaces are equipped with compost, recycling, and furniture made to last to reduce waste.  Instead of stocking cans of seltzer water, we operate a refillable fountain foundation and washable and compostable cups. In our shared kitchens, we offer fridges and ceramic tableware so employees can bring meals in reusable containers from home, encouraging litter-free lunches. 

Attain Building And Design Sustainability Certification

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certification is a nationally renowned and highly coveted certification that can be attained for your physical building.  

The most used green building system in the world, LEED, and the U.S. Green Building Council aim to certify structures, organizations, and individuals in sustainable practices. For buildings, the process aims to address carbon, energy, water, waste, transportation materials, health, and indoor environmental quality. The certification process has four levels—Certified, Silver, Gold, and Platinum—which are based on a points system.

At CANOPY, our founder-designers, Yves Béhar and Amir Mortazavi, have thoughtfully considered every element of each location to provide members with functional, ergonomic, and emotional space to do their best work. Every CANOPY location is different, but all feature beautiful, durable natural materials and abundant natural light. Yves has designed workstations and chairs for Herman Miller, which adheres to stringent standards of sustainability, for over a decade. CANOPY’s private offices and open-plan workspaces are furnished with the latest iterations of these designs, along with Yves’ Public Office Landscape desks and Sayl chairs. 

Make Leadership Accountable To Stakeholders

A strong leadership with clearly defined goals for sustainability is hugely important. Your corporate governance structure should be accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders, with legal commitments in place. 

Beyond company-wide certifications, there are other ways to increase your sustainability profile. One is for senior management or team leaders to receive personal development and certification in sustainable practices. 

The LEED Professional certification path spans three levels.

  • LEED Green Associate: This entry-level credential requires a worker to pass an exam on general sustainability knowledge and green building practices.
  • LEED Advanced Professional: The next level is the Advanced Professional which also has a specialty attached to it and requires an additional exam measuring knowledge in a specific rating system.
  • LEED Fellow: The highest achievable level requires ten years of experience in green building, and a portfolio review, and is only possible through peer nomination. There are only 259 active fellows in the world 

Here in the Bay Area, the San Francisco State Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Business targets managers and entrepreneurs who will “help lead organizations toward financially viable business practices that contribute to a healthier natural environment.” In other words, it teaches you how to balance profit with sustainability rather than sacrificing one for the other.

Make An Impact in Your Community

Your business can contribute to its employees’ financial security, health and safety, wellness, career development, engagement, and satisfaction. You can evaluate whether your business model is designed to benefit workers, such as companies with workforce development programs to support individuals with barriers to employment. A company’s impact on the broader community in which it operates, hires from, and sources from, is also important. It’s worth looking at how your policies for diversity, equity and inclusion, economic impact, civic engagement, charitable giving, and supply chain management stack up. 

Inviting stakeholders and experts to host events or talks to share the latest knowledge and best practices is a great way to engage your community. CANOPY offers a robust calendar of events focused on actionable sustainability initiatives. Previous happenings have included:

 

Source from Sustainable Vendors

It’s not always possible to choose to lease within a sustainable building, or for leaders at small businesses to take time away from their desk to complete certifications. Buying services or products from certified sustainable vendors, by proxy, can take you much of the way to sustainable operations.

CANOPY prioritizes purchasing from responsible, sustainable, and local outlets and are committed to sourcing at least 50% of our supplies from local and independent vendors. We buy our snacks and amenities in bulk from healthy-food-focused suppliers. 

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