Tips for making your small business more eco-friendly

By this point in time, most people are probably fully convinced of the benefits of becoming more eco-friendly. At least they are in principle. In practice, while going green may be the way of the long-term future, in the short term it can be expensive.

The good news is it doesn’t have to be, in fact, there are eco-friendly options which can actually save you money.

Here are some suggestions.

Go paperless

Even though paper is easy to recycle and recycled paper is certainly a better option than paper made from all-new materials, even recycling paper carries a surprisingly high environmental footprint and using all-new paper is actually very bad for the environment because its production requires both a lot of energy and a lot of chemicals.

This means that going paperless is a fairly substantial benefit to the environment and can also bring other benefits to your office, including productivity gains and staff/customer satisfaction since these days paper is often seen more as a nuisance than a help.

Going paperless can also make a real difference to your costs. Not only will you not be buying paper, but you’ll not be buying toner or printers and you’ll be able to repurposes storage space for more valuable uses.

Cut the commutes

Going paperless is often a prerequisite to making work an activity rather than a place.

While there are a lot of jobs which require people to be in a certain place some of the time, very few jobs actually require someone to be in a particular place all of the time.

In some cases, people may have a preference for working in commercial premises (or may not be in a position to work from another location due to their personal circumstances), but many people enjoy the flexibility of being able to work from home (or another location of their choice) at least some of the time.

That in itself is one good reason to support remote working. Another is that reducing commutes can go a long way to reducing a company’s carbon footprint.

Finally, cutting the commutes can actually help to lower a company’s costs, since there will be fewer people in the office using facilities such as water and electricity. It may even allow a company to move to a smaller office, cutting costs even further.

Make tech equipment communal whenever possible

Tech equipment is fundamental to modern businesses, but its environmental footprint goes way beyond the electricity it uses. Limiting the amount of electronic devices we use can, therefore, be a major environmental win and it can also save a lot of money.

For most companies, the first step in streamlining tech equipment is to carry out a proper audit of who is using what devices, where, when, for how long and how often.

This can then be used to make accurate judgments about how many devices are actually needed (including a few for back-ups). Even if companies do not want to sell-on their existing surplus devices, they can adjust their buying patterns for the future.

Author Bio

Ansini Limited are specialists in vacuum forming and thermoplastic forming. Their social responsibility to the environment ensures their procedures and products cut waste and reduce the use of energy.