Green Office Certification
The Green Office Certification Program supports sustainability within campus departments and units. It includes an external review by students and internal employee reflection across a variety of sustainability metrics including waste, energy, water, and social interactions. Results of the surveys and visual audits help develop specific actions by the office or unit that in turn help the campus achieve our shared sustainability goals.
Certify Your Office!
Getting your office certificated is simple, each form takes about 10 minutes and can be completed within a month depending on the office. To start the process, please fill out the sign up form. After completing the form, you can expect to receive an email in 1-2 business days regarding the next steps. If you have any questions about this please email rharding@csumb.edu
Leading your Office through Certification
For the Green Office Certification Program to succeed, we ask that a small leadership team is formed in your office. The team would be a one or more employees who are especially motivated to inspire their office to meet sustainable goals. The team would be the primary contact for the Sustainability Office, in order to set up meetings, relay surveys and set of the visual audit. The responsibilities of the group include:
- Contact/Providing the total number of employees in the office
- Setting Up Meetings
- Filling out the General Survey
- Distributing the Individual Survey
- Assisting in Leading the Final Meeting
Green Certification Steps
In order for the certification to go as smoothly as possible, it is advised to have a strong understanding of what will take place during certification. Review of certification steps is strongly encouraged
Step 1: Sign Up
Fill out the sign up form online to inform the Sustainability Office about your interest in the program. The team will then contact you to begin steps 2-4. Note: When filling out the sign up form, have in mind a person or a few people that will help you lead the certification through your office.
In the contact email, the office lead will receive information on the next steps. Those next steps will outline what will be needed from the office leads in the coming weeks. Such as filling out the General Office Certification, distributing the Individual Certification Form to all the employees in the office, setting up meetings with the office lead team as well as a meeting with the whole office when time comes.
Inorder to make scoring automatic and anonymous a Survey ID will be passed out for each office. The Survey ID is a set of four numerical digits (XXXX or 1234). This will allow the Sustainability Office to identify which individual and general survey is coming from which office. If a survey doesn’t have an approved Survey ID it will be discarded.
The Survey ID is provided in the primary contact email and then once again provided in the individual survey distribution .
Step 2: General Survey
The lead team will fill out the general survey, which will provide information about the overall, current practices of the office or department.
The general survey covers the general practices of the office. Covering:
- Energy
- Office Events
- Waste
- Sourcing
- Kitchen and Common Areas
- Water
The survey is meant to be filled out by the small team of leaders in the office that were identified during the sign up process. It’s helpful for the team to gather information on, how much paper is being purchased by the office each month, is the paper post consumer waste and how waste is being disposed in the office. We recommend that you fill out the survey in your office. You can check the answers of specific questions or consult with certain workers.
Step 3: Individual Survey
Each employee fills out an anonymous individual survey with information about their own activities that have an impact on sustainability practices within the office.
The individual survey focuses on the sustainability practices of each employee in the office. The survey takes about ten minutes. It will cover,
- Appliances
- Trainings and Informative Meetings
- Transportation
- Kitchen and Common Areas
- Electronics at Desks
The survey will provided to the lead team to be distributed to the rest of the employees in the office. The survey is completely anonymous and each office is identified with the survey ID. Participation is also graded, two weeks after the survey has been sent out. This is done by comparing the total number of employees in the office. To the the number of surveys that have been filled out with that offices specific survey ID. Employees will most likely not need any personal reference material.
Step 4: Visual Audit
Lastly, the Sustainability Office will collect all the information received and then do a visual inspection.
Once both surveys have been filled out. The lead team and Sustainability Office will schedule a visual audit to conducted of the office. The audit is intended to take under an hour and at a non intrusive time. If available, both the lead team and Eco-Otters will conduct the audit together. Assessing,
- Desk Appliances
- Material Disposal
- Kitchen and Common Areas
Examples below:
Additional Information
- Paper UsagePaper UsageLinkKitchen SpacesKitchen SpacesLinkOffice CommunityOffice CommunityLink
Campus, Planning and Development
The pilot and first office to complete the certification was the Campus, Planning and Development Office in Mountain Hall. The office scored on overall score of 54.1%. A total of a 11 out 21 employees participated in the individual survey process. Leading the office to set goals around printing, zero waste, and alternative transportation.
Some common issues with the surveys:
“You Need Permission To Access”
This error is a result of not being signed into the correct account to access the survey. Both surveys can only be accessed by using your CSUMB, Google account. A way to make sure that you are currently in that account is to open a separate browser, log-in to you CSUMB Google email and then attempt to access the survey from that browser.
The image to the above states: You need permission. This form can only be viewed by users in the owner's organization. Try contacting the owner of the from if you think this is a mistake. Learn More. This content is neither created nor endorsed by Google. Report Abuse - Terms of Service. Google Forms
“This page isn’t working”
This error comes with a small sentence saying “too many redirects”. This can be fix in multiple different ways. The easiest solution is to simply change browsers to answer the survey. This is done by opening a different browser, logging into your CSUMB Google email, and then opening the survey from there. If you are on a Chromebook, simply open an incognito tab by pressing ctrl+shift+N and then acting as though that is a separate browser.
The image above states: This page isn't working. docs.google.com redirected you too many times. Try clearing your cookies. ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS. Reload