One of the key focuses in the world of business today is sustainability, and for a good reason. Climate change is a huge problem for our planet today, and some of the biggest contributors to this are businesses and corporations. Therefore, these groups are responsible for reducing their impact on climate change by reducing carbon emissions and striving to promote green initiatives. Because of this responsibility, many members of the public will even choose to avoid businesses that don’t actively participate in sustainable practices, and so you could end up losing out on profits if you don’t take sustainability into consideration. Here are a few things to consider when making your small business more eco-friendly and sustainable today.
Consider Your Employees Commuting Habits
The use of vehicles is naturally one of the more impactful things when it comes to harming the environment due to the emissions of each vehicle. Having your employees commute to your business is going to indirectly contribute towards the emissions created by your company. This is why it’s important to provide better commuting options for your employees, such as offering to compensate those using public transport or providing electric cars for those who need company cars. These options will generally contribute towards reducing your company’s emissions across the board.
Offer Remote Working Where Possible
If it’s not a necessity for your team to be in the office, consider remote working options where possible. While it’s sometimes important for employees to travel to meetings or conduct work in person with their teammates, in many cases, it isn’t necessary for them to physically be in the office. Meetings can often work just as well online, and plenty of work can be done from a home office. Consider this where possible and reduce the amount of commuting your employees do.
Reduce Your Carbon Footprint From Deliveries
Another way in which businesses influence climate change is by paying for long-distance deliveries as well as paying for deliveries from businesses that don’t practise sustainability. Delivery companies that don’t integrate sustainability into their operations, should be avoided where possible. As well as this, you should also look at buying locally as much as you can, this will not only reduce your carbon footprint significantly but will positively impact your local communities.
Make Use Of Sustainable Packaging And Products
Sustainability is not just all about how we travel. In fact, a number of other issues within the world of business and society in general negatively impact the environment. One of these is the use of unsustainable items around your office, such as non-recyclable office supplies and products that have unsustainable packaging. If your business packages products, it’s important for you to source sustainable materials if you want your company to be less damaging to the environment.
Implement A Recycling Initiative Within Your Company
Recycling is one of the original practices when it comes to environmentalism and is still an essential one for a good reason. Landfills continue to be a problem for our planet and society, and even with the increase in recyclable materials in circulation, these landfills continue to be added to. It’s important to implement your own strict recycling initiative within your company so that you can be certain you’re not needlessly adding to this astronomical wastage in society. This includes recycling everything you possibly can, reducing your waste, and being strict about purchasing recyclable materials and products whenever possible.
Learn More About Sustainability Practices
As a business owner, it’s important to always learn new things and think of ways to keep up with others in your industry. When it comes to sustainability, it may be worth turning your attention towards some great online sustainability courses offered by experts like the faculty at the University of Cambridge Institute For Sustainability Leadership. With courses like these, you can learn about things such as sustainable marketing practices, business and climate change, and sustainable supply chain management, to name a few things. This will help you to discover many more methods of improving your company’s overall sustainability. You could even sponsor certain employees, such as managerial staff, to complete these courses.
Work With Other Sustainable Businesses
One of the best ways in which you can improve your own sustainability is by working with others that champion these goals as well. It’s a great idea to work with other sustainable businesses, whether that’s suppliers, clients, or business partners, so that you can bounce new ideas off of each other while encouraging each other to be as sustainable as possible. When you surround yourself with others that have the values you want within your business, it’s going to be much easier to commit to them yourself.
Make Sure Your Web Hosting Is Green
There are lots of things we might pay for that are using energy that we don’t even consider. One of these is actually website hosting. The company that you pay to run and host your website is understandably using power to run the servers that your website is hosted on. This is why many looking for sustainable solutions will switch hosting services to green web hosting companies. They will use clean energy providers whenever possible to reduce their impact on the environment.
Add Your Own Green Space Where Possible
While it’s not necessarily going to have the largest impact on the environment, adding plants around your office will have a number of great benefits to the physical and mental health of your team, as well as improving their motivation. However, while it’s not a huge impact, adding more green space can be positive for the environment. Certain office plants can actually remove toxins from the air, increasing the overall air quality, and they also naturally produce oxygen. You could even do this on a grander scale if you own an outdoor space at your office by adding lots of outdoor plants to this space, turning it into an eco-friendly haven.
Switch To Paperless Practices
With the assistance of technology, it is almost unnecessary to use as much paper as many businesses still do. Switching to a paperless system or even just reducing the amount of paper you use is very easy today. While the concept of changing the way you do things in the office so drastically can be daunting, it’s important to remember that there are lots of benefits to doing so. These benefits are not even solely focused on helping the environment, either. Digital alternatives can often be more productive than analogue options, and can significantly boost productivity across the board, so switch over as soon as you possibly can to both help the environment and improve your business.