Photo: Katrin Havia, WWF
Green Office is an environmental system developed by the WWF for offices. The system helps organisations reduce their carbon footprint and use natural resources wisely. The Green Office certificate granted to K-Kampus shows that the building’s environmental programme and its implementation meet the criteria set by the WWF.
Working for the environment has been a key aspect of K Group’s corporate responsibility efforts for decades. The completion of K-Kampus, K Group’s new main office building, offered an excellent opportunity to create new operating practices for employees’ day-to-day work.
“When we moved into our new office building in the Kalasatama district of Helsinki in the summer, we wanted to make sure that our ecological footprint in this new location is as small as possible,” says Minna Saari, who heads the K-Kampus Green Office team.
K Group joined the WWF’s Green Office network in autumn 2018 and started to build an environmental system for K-Kampus in accordance with the Green Office principles.
The Green Office fees paid by K Group are used towards the WWF’s work to protect the Baltic Sea.
The themes of the K-Kampus environmental programme concern matters that serve to reduce the building’s carbon footprint: energy and water consumption, purchasing, recycling, sorting, transport and catering.
Energy efficiency on K-Kampus is improved by flexible facilities, optimised technical building system adjustments and the use of renewable energy. Products with environmental labels are preferred in purchases for the office. The location for K-Kampus was chosen partly based on its good transport connections and employees are encouraged to commute by public transport or shared bicycles. The carbon footprint of waste management at K-Kampus is compensated for, and the kitchens on each floor enable easy sorting of waste.
Daily lunch at work is a key time for each employee to improve the ways they do things.
“We encourage people to only take as much food as they’re going to eat, and we sell excess food at the end of the working day at affordable prices for people to take home. The biowaste generated at the staff canteen is weighed, and the development of the food waste amounts is displayed on the screens at the canteen,” Saari explains.
Indicators have been created for the goals of the environmental programme of K-Kampus, and performance is monitored in terms of these indicators.
On 25 November 2019, the WWF conducted an inspection at K-Kampus and found that the Green Office criteria were being met. Consequently, the WWF granted a Green Office certificate to K-Kampus.
“The Green Office certificate inspires and requires us to take the environment into account in our day-to-day work. Workplaces have many opportunities to promote sustainable development and implement environmentally friendly solutions that mitigate climate change. We can save money and help the environment by recycling, reducing our energy consumption and making sustainable purchases,” says Saari.
K-Kampus invests in communicating its Green Office goals and their achievement. Employees are provided with information about Green Office on the My K intranet, on café screens and in newsletters.
The offices that have been granted a Green Office certificate report to the WWF on their chosen indicators once a year. The WWF monitors the meeting of the Green Office criteria and the use of the certificate through conducting inspections every three years.
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