Making the decision to become a more environmentally-conscious business seems like a big one. In fact, it is a big decision, but not in a negative way. You don’t need to fork out money for green technology or waste time reshaping your business into a brand new “environmental” model. Going green is about reducing waste; that means less time wasted on inefficient procedures, less money wasted on resources, and less damage done to the environment (improving your brand in the eyes of customers). It’s essentially all positive, but here’s what your business needs to know if it needs any more reason to “go eco”.
Saving energy isn’t time-consuming.
Turning off lights and computers when you’re not using them is basic. Hopefully, you and your employees already do that to avoid being wasteful. Still, there’s a lot more that your business could be doing to save not only the environment but huge amounts of money on your energy bills; replacing old appliances with energy-efficient ones is a good start. You could also look into powering your business premises with solar panels to cut out reliance on the grid and expensive energy bills altogether.
Still, it all depends on the nature of your specific business. You don’t have to be completely dependent on renewable sources of energy; if you’re unsure as to whether this is the route for you then you could consider looking into reliable backup power to ensure that you always have a plan B in the event of your power source letting you down. It’s important to avoid downtime in business, which is totally understandable, but saving money and the planet on which your company relies for its resources and continued operations is also important to staying in business. Going eco is about finding that compromise and ensuring that your business increases its level of success as a result of that.
You can use alternatives to paper and plastic.
Cutting out paper and plastic usage altogether is obviously the most environmentally-conscious thing your business could do and it’d save you a lot of money. If that’s manageable then your company should do it, but some customer-facing businesses or businesses creating certain types of products might still need those materials to some extent. You could opt for green paper and plastic instead, however. Many stores are offering custom bags made out of natural materials and “bags for life” to help cut down on excessive bag usage and wastage.
You can reuse more than you think.
Businesses contribute to the majority of the world’s waste, and that makes sense; it’s a constant and never-ceasing operation. You need to be producing more, more, and more. Still, that doesn’t mean you can’t find ways to reuse resources; incoming envelopes and cardboard boxes could be repurposed for outgoing packages. Your business could get creative to save huge amounts of money per year. Encourage your employees to think about bringing porcelain mugs in to work, for example, so that they’ve got a reusable mug for coffee and other drinks (or provide company mugs).
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