Reducing our Companies Carbon Footprint and Helping Others


Greater Victoria Housing Society

Greater Victoria Housing SocietyAs part of our commitment to the environment we continually measure our carbon footprint to see how we can best reduce our impact.  Having said that, we are a distribution company and as such cannot practically reduce our carbon footprint to zero.  So for a number of years we purchased carbon offsets, but in most cases these were not of a local nature.

As of 2015 we decided to go a different route and are now donating money to the Greater Victoria Housing Society each year.  Our first donation funded a lighting upgrade at Tillicum Terrace and reduced the Victoria Housing Society’s energy consumption by 4415 KWH annually as well as their carbon footprint by 0.13 Tonnes C2es annually.

We are very proud to support the GVHS in reducing it’s carbon footprint, and also provides housing support for those less fortunate than ourselves. Check out GVHS’s post here

 Hospital Foundations

In addition to our support of the Greater Victoria Housing Society we are longtime supporters of the Saanich Peninsula Hospital Foundation, Victoria Hospitals Foundation and Nanaimo Hospital Foundation.  Our focus on funding these foundations is deeply rooted in a desire for Vancouver Islanders to have best in class access to Healthcare.Saanich Peninsula Hospital Foundation
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Without these foundations many improvements in our healthcare system would not take place.

Recently Graphic Office donated chairs to the Victoria Hospital Foundation and they thanked us with this very special video. Click here to view it on youtube

We believe in doing our part to protect our environment.

Environmental Initiatives

Graphic Office has just moved into a brand new state of the art warehouse and showroom space.  We will be cross referencing our energy usage against our old premises once we have sufficient data to evaluate.

We are certain that our energy usage will be significantly less as:

  • Better utilization of vertical space increased our storage capacity while reducing our overall footprint from 35,000 square feet to 32,000 square feet.
  • Heating and cooling is now handled by the latest generation of energy efficient heat pumps.
  • Insulation and energy usage follows the latest ASHRAE standards.
  • Lighting in the office and showroom area is 100% LED lamping.
  • Lighting in the warehouse is motion controlled so low usage areas are often off, which translates to 40% of the space.

Fuel Consumption-Graphic Office has a no idle policy for all vehicles. All 10 vehicles use B5 biodiesel. All trucks are fuelled at our office reducing travel time to and from fuelling locations. This year we purchased two new highly efficient Ford Transit vehicles to replace our older vans and reduce our fuel consumption by 40%.

Waste reduction-Graphic Office recycles all cardboards, waste woods, pallets, and metals. Unlike retail companies such as those in office supply business who pass on as much as 80% of their packaging material to the end user, Graphic is furniture only company where all packaging must be removed from the customer site.
We have moved to unpackaged, blanket wrapped shipments wherever possible.

Employee incentives to reduce carbon footprint-Graphic Office Interiors incents car pooling plan for its employees.