A few years ago in our blog there was a post about environmental initiatives that we came up with and did in ABBYY. Since our employees have been restless, they have been inventing something new all the time, since then new eco-projects have appeared, and we decided to return to this topic. If you also care about ecology in your office, let's exchange experience. Tell us in the comments, like you have. By the way, do you know when we will begin to recycle used batteries?

Paper

Each year, humanity cuts down and processes a huge break through the woods. Each office worker with simple actions can reduce paper consumption (and save at least a little wood): print on two sides of a sheet, make copies of small documents on one page, print two pages on one sheet. At ABBYY, these valuable skills are passed down from generation to generation through instructions that hang next to each MFP.


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We hand over unnecessary, irrelevant documents to waste paper, and send secret documents to the shredder. The shredded paper is then recycled. To determine the degree of their relevance, relevance and privacy help special schemes, located next to the device.




ABBYY's US office also participates in green projects - for example, in the National Forest Foundation’s “Trees for US” program. Our company's participation in this program is that for each download of the trial version of ABBYY FineReader 12 from www.abbyygogreen.com, our US office will transfer a donation to the National Forest Foundation, and thus plans to donate an amount sufficient to finance the landing 20 Thousands of trees in Chippeva National Park in Minnesota. The park was badly damaged by the hurricane of 2012, and much of the forest is in need of restoration.

Electricity

Saving electricity in a large office is difficult, but possible. Anyone who has finally finished deliberating, we suggest turning off the lights in the meeting rooms.



The implementation of the same idea in our European office in Munich.

Tetra pack

Last year we had a nice art object from TetraPak called “Packages, give up!” In our office. Here you can hand over unwanted packaging for further processing. The container is popular: many employees even bring empty bags from home.

Ceramic mugs instead of plastic cups

At some point we calculated and found out that up to 12 thousand plastic cups and 8 thousand plastic plates were used and thrown away every month. As you may know, plastics need several hundred years only to begin to decay. And we thought that it would be nice to abandon the use of plastic utensils in the office. At first, the measure seemed radical even to us — after all, people were used to it — and we decided to conduct a survey among employees. 80% of the respondents supported the idea, and now we have such circles instead of cups (cups remained only in the coolers).



To use common dishes was not only convenient, but also hygienic, all dishes were washed in dishwashers at high temperatures.

Utilization of office equipment

Released office equipment, we hand over for recycling for the second year. Its recycling, in contrast to waste paper and batteries, is worth the extra money. For two years, we have recycled 113 system units, 39 monitors, 11 laptops, 2 multifunction devices, a projector, 8 servers and 10 server batteries.

Recycle technique like this:

System blocks

First, the blocks are manually disassembled into their component parts: metal frame, plastic, boards, power supplies, wires.



The metal frame goes for scrap. First, everything is placed under a hydraulic press, where all metal parts are reduced to the minimum possible size. At the exit we get compact cubes, which are conveniently transported to the plant.



When there are a lot of such cubes, they are sent to be melted down at the metallurgical plant. Metal from our system units was sent to melt at the plant in Chelyabinsk.

Plastic . Employees of the recycling station manually sort the plastic. The special marking on the surface (triangle icon) helps them in this - of course, you have seen such.



After sorting, each type of plastic melts separately at different temperatures. What will the material go next? The plastic from our units and monitors will turn into wheels for trash cans and containers.

Computer boards . The processing of the boards takes place with the help of special equipment: first, the boards get into the chopper, where they are crushed into pieces. Then the metals are separated by an electrochemical method. Precious metals are cast into ingots and pellets. Bars are bought by banks, and jewelry factories are pellets (the processing station has a license to work with precious metals). The entire precious metal passes through the state commission for the circulation of precious metals.



Wires are crushed entirely with the shell. They start on the tape, on top of which a magnet is located - iron “sticks” to it (it is, accordingly, sent for scrap). Everything else falls on the vibroplate, where the separation of copper and rubber occurs due to the different density of the material. The copper melts and wires are made from it again.

Monitors

Surprisingly, some of the monitors at the disposal station are being repaired. All other monitors are dismantled, and their components are recycled.

Volunteer eco-trips

When I first talked about my work to my grandmother, she skeptically chuckled: “What, are you driving people to Saturday?” No, we do not drive. We organized the first event at the request of employees, and now eco-trips have already become a good tradition and, of course, only those who want to take part in them. We went to Prioksko-Terrasny reserve several times - clearing debris in open-air cages where bison graze; they helped Tsar's apiary in Izmailovo, the Melikhovo Museum-Preserve, the arboretum of the Botanical Garden, planted ate with Greenpeace.



In the past couple of years, our volunteers have been participating in the new format of community work days - eco-quests. The essence of these events is that teams collect garbage and for a while - at the end they watch who collects more, hand out points and prizes. For graded trash points and honor, of course, more.

Bicycles

Office bike parking is no surprise to anyone now, but since we are writing about ecology, we can't help but mention them. The love of bicycles in our company sometimes borders on heroism — we ride our bicycle to work, even in winter. ABBYY bike enthusiasts gather at the summer cycle race, spontaneous pokatushki and traditionally participate in the city event "To work on a bicycle."

Eco stand

As we wrote last time , in one of the halls we have an eco-stand. We collect batteries, energy-saving lamps, waste paper. Soon, we hope, separate office garbage collection will be organized in our office building.





And how are you?