Most of the time, your waiting room is the first expression of your brand a new clinic patient experiences. Specialize in cycling-related physical therapy? Your reception area walls might be covered with action shots from the Tour de France. For clinics that focus on a more elderly clientele, perhaps your waiting room is furnished with more comfortable seating and brighter lighting. The same holds true for clinics that want to communicate their commitment to being eco-friendlier. It all starts with the reception area.
The time spent in a clinic’s reception area has a direct impact on the opinions they form about the practice. In general, you want to ensure your waiting area is comfortable, inviting and caters to the basic needs of your patients. It also helps if there’s a bit of stimulation. 3 mins with nothing to read, watch or listen to can seem like an eternity to even the most hardcore of meditation gurus.
But How Can You Make Your Reception Area Greener?
Start By Adding Some Live Plants
Not only are live plants the universal symbol for caring about the environment, they come with a host of benefits:
- Plants can liven up otherwise drab office environments
- They can become a focal point of the room
- They improve air quality
- They can be used to break the waiting area into separate sections to allow for privacy and to make the space feel bigger
- There’s also that whole Feng Shui thing
As a starting point, we’ve put together the below list of the top three office plants
- Jade Plant – A succulent plant with small pink or white flowers. The jade plant requires little water and can survive in most indoor conditions.
- African Violet – A flowering plant, African Violets thrive in moderate to bright, indirect, indoor light.
- Peace Lily – Another flowering plant with large leaves and long white flowers. This plant doesn’t require large amounts of water or light to thrive.
Swap Out the Lightbulbs
Change out ordinary light bulbs with compact fluorescents (CFLs). Replace regular light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). Each CFL will save around $30 over its lifetime and pay for itself in six months. On top of that, they last about 10x longer and use 75% less energy than incandescent bulbs. When replacing lightbulbs, don’t forget about any table or floor lamps used around your waiting area.
Give Recycling a Chance
“Do you guys recycle?” A common question from most environmentally conscious people looking to dispose of a glass or plastic bottle in an unfamiliar office. If you want to talk the talk about being eco-friendly, you must walk-the-walk. Be sure that recycling bins (and even compost bins if allowed by local law) are accessible and prominent in the waiting area. Even if a waiting patient has nothing to recycle, the mere sight of the recycling station communicates that your clinic is indeed green.