Criteria For The Development of Green Oce Standard of Thailand For Environmental Sustainability

The Green Oce Standard was developed to lessen resource consumption and wastage in the oce work process, achieve savings and minimize CO 2 emission from the oce's operations in the environment. Its long-term goal is training and motivating staff for resource eciency, energy conservation, reduce pollution and wastage in the oces’ work process and recycle the generated waste and these behavioral changes will lead to environmental sustainability. This research aims to develop a Green Oce Standard in Thailand explaining its criteria to promote the establishment of green oces all over Thailand. Specically, this article describes the criteria of green oce standards, which are grouped into six categories as 1) Policies determination, operation planning, and continual improvement; 2) Communication and creating awareness; 3) Resource and energy consumption; 4) Oce waste management; 5. Environment and safety; and 6) Eco-friendly procurement. It used mixed research methodology in different stages from March 2016 to August 2018, but mainly by the application of EDFR (Ethnographic Delphi Futures Research), by selecting a group of 17 expert panels to obtain their outlook and opinions. Green Oce Standard was nally developed to certify participant-organizations in Thailand that conforms their management according to the criteria of Green Oce Management Standard.


Introduction
World Wide Fund for Nature, Finland [1] rst developed the Green O ce Standard as an o ce management program with the main objective of reducing resource consumption and wastage in the o ce work process, achieve savings to lessen the burden of CO 2 emission and carbon footprint released by o ce's operations in the environment. Green O ce Standard offers guidelines for o ce management that are environmentally sustainable. It is a management system in the o ce which is easy to implement by training the o ce staff to change their behavior to be responsible for the o ce's resource usage. Having a certi ed Green O ce standard has a long-term goal of resource e ciency, energy conservation, reduce pollution and wastage in the o ces' work process and recycle the generated waste if applicable and these changes in the work process and behavior will achieve savings to create a healthy environment, by lessening the burden on the environment. In other words, the Green O ce Standard was developed with objectives of continual improvement in the o ce work environment, in terms of minimizing resources and wastage, to reduce the environmental impact of daily o ce work operations. It is commonly seen that in the daily operation of the o ce works process, lots of energy, paper, ink are consumed and at the same time many wastes are generated too and all these are responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. Every organization, government, or non-government, can participate to be certi ed as Green O ce Standard. But to be a certi ed Green O ce Standard, such organizations and their o ces should follow certain criteria guidelines in the o ce work operations, management, and behavior of staff, employees, stakeholders, and customers by motivating and adopting environmentally sustainable habits that conform to the standard. A quali ed Green O ce is provided with a Green Logo Certi cate.
1.1 Review of Literature DEQP (Department of Environmental Quality Promotion) is the pioneer agency that propagates and supports the importance of conservation, pollution reduction, and promotion of eco-friendly products for a healthy environment. DEQP has made many attempts with introducing and implementing projects for developing a sustainable environment in Thailand and Green O ce is one such project targeting to nd a sustainable solution in the organization of the o ce's management since daily o ce operations consume a lot of energy, paper, ink, etc., and also generate much waste. So, under the sponsorship of DEQP, Aroonsrimorakot et al. [2] evaluated the Green O ce Projects in Thailand in terms of social, economic, and environmental impact of these projects concerning SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) of the United Nations. The data for the evaluation was collected through the application of questionnaires from 73 o ces, along with the guidelines of multistage evaluation, monitoring, and analyzing participating o ces in their daily o ce's work operation process and procedure for certifying as a green o ce standard. The evaluation result found a high satisfaction rate from the participants on national auditors, o ce staffs knowledge, and awareness of the bene ts of green o ce and the o ce's operation procedure, purchase of equipment, lighting, air conditioning, paper, ink, printer, etc. As a result of the study, the study recommended upgrading the Green O ce Standards in Thailand at the International as per the SDGs. Aroonsrimorakot et al. [3]  Careless o ce operation has caused environmental deterioration, and care should be taken by o ce staff in the selection of o ce procurement and for consumption, and at the same time, they should have awareness with taking responsibility to save energy and resources and reduce waste that is harmful to the environment. If wastes are generated, they should be reused or recycled and if not applicable for reusing, they should be managed and disposed of at an appropriate site and such steps will help to prevent environmental quality deterioration [4]. So, Green O ce Standards was developed to change the behavioral practice of the staff to lessen human activities' impact on the environment, resulting in greenhouse gas emission, climate change, and global warming [5]. This deterioration of the environment is increased as there is increasing use of fossil fuel energy in the o ce's work process such as air-conditioner, lighting, printer, computer, traveling vehicles, meeting, or procurement, which increasingly emit CO 2 , thus leading to environmental deterioration [6]. As a safeguard, o ces' should initiate some steps to ward off or lessen the effect of o ce activities that cause environmental problems. The Green O ce Standard provides guidelines criteria to save resources, reduce energy consumption and o ce wastes by encouraging staff to reuse and recycle, procure ecofriendly equipment, product, or services to solve these environmental problems [3,7,8,9]. As a rst step to encounter the impact of climate change and other environmental hazards, all established organizations should reform their o ce practices by adopting the green o ce principles and following the indicators, for the e cient management of resources used in the o ces' environment [10]. Varanavicius and Navikaite [11] further highlighted the necessity of proactive environmentally friendly approaches in resource usage and activities, particularly in the o ce organization, for environmental sustainability and economic development in recent decades due to the global impact of environmental changes and economic crisis. An organization's o ce should have certain quali cations listed as guidelines criteria to be certi ed as Green O ce. Some of the criteria include 1. Save resources used in the o ce such as energy, water, paper, ink; 2. Switch to using renewable energy; 3.
Minimize pollution and waste, while promoting reuse and recycle of resources; 4. Innovate and adopt design that is environmentally friendly and use green materials in the construction of buildings and so on [12,13]. So, DEQP has developed and assessed the quality of Green O ce Standard environmental management in o ces of Thailand since the scal year 2013. In course of time, within a short span, it has expanded its establishments to many parts of Thailand and at the same time developed and upgraded the eco-friendly o ce, including both Governmental and Non-Governmental Organizations, Public and Private. All responsible agencies or organizations investigate greenhouse gases emission in all departments, zones, or provinces and the supply chain network and consumptions. This investigation will help in leading to a green society having sustainable production and consumption. The above review of the literature suggests that the target objective of developing the Green O ce Standard is to change the behavior in the o ces' work process, promote bene ts of saving resources, and reduction in waste to create a sustainable society with a sustainable environment, that is, to create an eco-friendly workplace with the promotion of sustainable circular economy. Thus the development of green o ce standards is very important as it will motivate staff to perform o ce tasks for environmental sustainability through o ces staff training and education, thus helping to promote o ce's staff's awareness about the advantages of following the Green O ce Standard. Following the criteria will result in dual bene ts, including the o ce and the environment [14]. To certify the participating o ce for sustainable environmental awareness by training and imparting education to o ce staff on using energy-saving devices, renewable energy sources, reduce and recycle waste, etc.
The speci c objective of this research article is to describe the working guidelines criteria of green o ce standards, which can be grouped into six categories:

Research Methods
This research used mixed research methodology in different stages during a period of two years, that is, during March 2016 -August 2018, conducted mainly by the application of EDFR (Ethnographic Delphi Futures Research), which is more applicable, exible, adapted from the Delphi method [15]. EDFR is a developing future research technique that combines both Ethnography Future Research and Delphi. The combination of these techniques helps to solve the methodological weakness of each other [16]. In ethnography, the eldwork is usually conducted by a single researcher who lives in the eld or area of study, usually for a year or more to observe, participate in a variety of aspects of a cultural group and gather detailed knowledge of the subject of investigation [17,18,19,20,21,22 ]. The Delphi method aims to get more reliable data from a panel of selected experts included in the study. The Delphi method resembles the survey technique of data collection, however, unlike using a selected sample, it selects a group of expert panels, who have in-depth knowledge of the selected subject that is going to be studied, to answer the detailed information of the investigated topic through administering a questionnaire [23,24,25,26]. So, the integration of these two methods is called the EDFR method and this combined technique is useful to obtain views from quali ed experts without prejudice or bias of in uencing opinion from peer-group pressure. Moreover, responses from the panel members were anonymous [27,28]. According to Reid [29], using the consultative Delphi method helps to improve the validity of the research due to two factors, rstly, the experts have to identify the standards which have high logical validity and this is considered as the most applicable to those environmental experts. Secondly, after having a consensus by the expert panels, they then identi ed and provide consent on the needed standards. The development of the standards consists of three major stages as 1) Organizing the committee; 2) Review of previous studies and preparing the outline of the Standard, and 3) Purpose of the Standard. The rst step is the selection of the group of expert panels to obtain their outlook and opinions. These expert panels comprising of seventeen members were purposively selected from various governmental and state enterprises, working in environment-related organizations, including the expert group from the Faculty of Environment and Resource Studies of Mahidol University, the Department of Environmental Quality Promotion, the Pollution Control Department, the Greenhouse Gas Management Organization (Public Organization), the Center for Nature and Agricultural Ecology, The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Bangchak Corporation Public Company Limited (BCP), etc. After selection, the panelists were then informed of the aims and objectives of the research and the methodology and the procedure of the study as well as their roles and responsibilities in the research. Since the current research passes through many stages and is a long process, they were further requested to spare their valuable time despite their busy schedule as the nature of the study required extra commitment and consumed a lot of time for an extensive period.

Procedures and instrumentation
This study was undertaken to develop the Green O ce Standard and guidelines criteria used measured in terms of the response from a standardized questionnaire -distribution was done during "Workshops" [30,31,32]. Panelists were provided instructions through email for completing the questionnaire and for attending the meeting in the workshop. Email and telephone conversations were further used for communication with the panelist during pre and post-workshop. The duration of the workshop is about one to two days, and four weeks duration as the time for processing the data and to create a nal and improved checklists according to the checked response of the questionnaire.

Workshop 1
The workshop was designed to explore, engage, and brainstorm the panelists in the rst round [22]. As a step to begin the brainstorming process, the panelists were then provided with 10 possible standards criteria as given in Table 1. These possible standards criteria were opened for group discussion and explanation, thus providing a chance for all experts to give their valuable ideas through comments in the workshop. The criteria were obtained after reviewing the available literature on environmentally friendly o ce. The experts were requested to give comments along with additional standard criteria which they

Workshop 3
In the third workshop a checklist, prepared according to the critical views and comments from workshop 2, was administered to the panelists or participants. Later on, a standard was developed based on major agreement by retaining and revising the criteria made in the second round workshop. Further, it was improved and nally resulted in a Green O ce Standard, Thailand based on the guidelines of the summarized criteria after taking into account major opinions and views of the panelists. The detail of the guidelines criteria included in this Standard is given in Table 2. These guidelines criteria were grouped into categories as follows:   -Use different forms of wastewater treatment and maintenance as scooping, cleaning, and screening food scraps or grease trap in a speci ed frequency with providing data in terms of quantity and contamination -Eliminate sludge/ food scraps/ oil and grease through the wastewater treatment system -Inspect for leakage, improve, repair wastewater treatment system for usability, e ciency and to remove contamination with other sources  -Make a list of procured goods or places that were certi ed as eco-friendly standards such as ISO 14001, Green hotel, Green label, etc.
-If the meeting places are not certi ed as eco-friendly places, need to select some places that can save time in traveling and arrangement of the meeting to make the selected venues as Green sustainable meeting areas.
From the three workshops, the researchers gained numerous insights from the panelists' comments relating to the visibility, requisite, and inclusion criteria for the development of the Green O ce Standard along with the role of the categories and its guidelines criteria. For instance, during the 2nd workshop, a panelist commented to include a criterion to explain the Environment Quality Indoor and Outdoor standard as outlined by WWF Green O ce Guidelines. The critical views of the panelists indeed help to the creation of guidelines and manuals leading to Green O ce Standard implementation. Another panelist indicated: "I believe the standards to have a good job. Many indicators criteria are included similarly as in carbon footprint assessment calculation". From the above result, it can be stated that the development of the green o ce standards passes through three major stages of lifecycle process as 1) organizing the responsible committee, 2) review of previous studies and outlining the pre-standard, and 3) development of the standard. This article explains guidelines criteria for Green O ce management standards which can be grouped into six categories, having a speci c weight percentage as shown in Table 2. From the above guidelines criteria, the rating will be considered relying on the attribution of the area, environmental consideration and practices, o ce staff's knowledge and awareness, the quantity of greenhouse gas emitted, and reduction in the o ce. The assessment criteria of all sub-criteria are provided to the committee asking them to select a rating from the 5 levels marked as 1-5.

Conclusion And Discussions
Criteria for the development of the Green O ce will help to promote o ces to perform daily o ce work operation procedures with environmental awareness and taking responsibility to save energy, minimize resource usage, reduce and reuse waste for developing into a sustainable environment. So, the Green O ce is a Management Standard Organizations that focus on the ecological objectives of minimizing carbon footprint or retarding the emission of CO 2 to develop a sustainable environment, by