Fighting climate change with more conscious office supply orders

Staples has provided office supplies to the Aalto University Foundation since 2005, nd to the Helsinki University of Technology before that. Sustainability is an important criterion also when choosing an office supply provider.

Our first objective has been to organise our ordering and storing practices. At Aalto University, we have centralised our office supply storages. This way we can monitor our consumption, combine our orders into larger ones and only order the products that we actually need. Staples has set up a programme to encourage its customers to reduce the amount of small orders, which cuts back on excess packaging and reduces transport emissions.

Staples has also launched a selection of products to help their customers make eco-conscious choices. These products are marked with an EasyTree icon,  and every time an EasyTree product is bought, Staples will plant a tree through the international Plant-for-the-Planet project. The project, started in 2007, fights climate change by planting trees and organising training events and camps for children. In 2018, some 200,000 trees were planted thanks to the project.

Staples will plant 92 trees thanks to the carbon footprint reduction caused by Aalto University’s more environmentally conscious office supply orders in 2018. Staples plants 10 trees for every 1% reduction in small orders and 1% increase in orders for EasyTree products compared to the orders placed the previous year.

More information on the Plant-for-the-Planet project https://www.plant-for-the-planet.org/en/home