During times when pollution has reached worrying levels, people should become more concerned with how they are helping minimise their impact on the environment. As a business owner, your role in environment protection becomes more relevant than the one of a regular individual, and you have the power of making some beneficial changes within your enterprise, which will contribute to your sustainability status. If you have been considering to green your business and are trying to find the best ways of achieving that goal, getting some essential insights on the subject might make things easier for you. Here are the green initiatives you should start thinking about:
Go paperless
One of the first strategies you should pay attention to, a technique that has started to become more popular among companies is going paperless. Considering that we are in fact living in the digital era, opting for digital format instead of traditional paper printed versions will be an environmentally friendly decision to make, and should be one of your considerations. Nowadays, you can even provide signatures digitally, because things have advanced significantly in this department, so using actual paper can be prevented or at least reduced. Regardless of what profile your business has, going paperless is a change that almost any company out there can pursue.
Upgraded recycling processes
Although you might already recycle some of your waste, considering a company produces quite a lot of volume in comparison with a household, for example, improving your habits in this department can truly make a difference. Besides the usual usage of recycling bins, you should also resort to more advanced equipment that will give you the opportunity to upgrade your waste management and start recycling by the book. The elements that you should have at your disposal at all times are a skip of appropriate size (suitable for the usual waste quantities you are producing), and a baler or a compactor for a more effective sorting of the trash. According to The Skip Company, as soon as a company introduces proper recycling and waste disposal equipment to their employees, things can become far more effective in this department, without much effort. You don’t even have to purchase the equipment and spend a lot of money on the items, because you can easily resort to the hire alternative. Also, find a good recycling company to collaborate with, which can handle periodical pickups and thus help you get the recycled waste to where it should be going in a convenient, effortless way.
Promote telecommuting
While a bit more difficult to do, determining your team to telecommute instead of each employee driving their own car to work can be an amazing thing. Think about how many gas emissions are being put out into the atmosphere if every single one of your staff members is driving daily to work and back home. Start a program that promote telecommuting, and if your company is large enough to afford making an investment, you can also provide your works with a company bus that facilitates transportation.
Lighting system upgrades
A lighting system improvement can bring you impressive energy bill savings. Cutting down on the costs you are usually paying for company building lighting purposes isn’t however the main benefit that you should be targeting, the benefit an upgrade has on the environment being far more important. Traditional light bulbs can be a source of energy wastage so switching to LEDs or other alternatives that ensure the optimization of energy consumption is advised. Moreover, these will also provide you with increased longevity, which means the financial factor becomes even more appealing. This type of in-house change is easy to implement, so this would be a virtually effortless action, while the effects remain quite important.
Green web hosting
Just like any company on the market, you probably rely on daily on multiple servers functioning at the same time. As you probably know, to keep servers working, providers do have quite a harmful effect on the environment, and while there’s not much you can do in this department, a strategy you could think about would be switching to green web hosting. There are web hosting companies that make their involvement in eco-friendly movements a priority in order to balance out the negative aspects of their infrastructure and servers. Do a search on green providers and pursue a switch.
Replace in-house appliances with energy-saving equivalents
Ever since eco-friendly practise have become so fundamental, the market has been enriched with a wide range of products that are designed to have as minimal impact on the environment as possible. If the appliances your company is currently using are outdated and haven’t been replaced in a long time, they might be consuming much more energy than they should. A simple solution to go green is replacing all of these items with energy-saving alternatives. Star rated appliances are now easy to find and purchase, and the price difference between them and their traditional counterparts isn’t one you couldn’t afford. A switch will allow you to reduce your overall energy consumption tremendously, aspect that will not only be advantageous from an eco-friendly perspective, but from a monetary point of view as well. With reduced energy consumption, you will also be granted with lower utility bills, which is just another appealing plus.
A green brand is the goal you should be trying to achieve at the moment, in order to become an activist in the fight against pollution and reduce the carbon footprint of your business’ actions. Giving your company a green status will also influence the way you are perceived by consumers, today’s customers being focused on this specific aspect when choosing between companies with the same profile. Although there are plenty more things you can do in order to increase the sustainability levels of your business, the initiative stated above are the ones you should start with. Get everyone in the company on board, and start prioritizing the right practices.
