Within any business, there must be a conscious effort to contribute to a greener society. As businesses churn out more energy than the average household, it’s only right that the business world holds some responsibility for what they’re putting out into the world. There’s plenty we can do to be more eco-friendly, so if you’re looking to make your business more eco-friendly, here’s how to deliver it to certain areas of the business.
Provide A Proper Recycling Scheme
It’s surprising at the lack of recycling schemes that appear in individual households, let alone businesses, but this should be the main focus and the main contribution to help to tackle harmful materials that affect our environment. Within the workplace, it might be something that the operations team take control of, especially if it means liaising with the company’s cleaners and creating clear signage. Every staff member should be briefed on what the recycling scheme is and what it is to be done when it comes to separating waste. It can be different for the area your business is in compared to what you do in your own home, so it’s worth clarifying what can be recycled, etc. If you need some advice, it’s certainly worth contacting the local governing body that is responsible for recycling in the area.
Encourage Your Staff
Your staff can sometimes be like children, in the sense that they can get a little lazy. It’s worth gathering some statistics on what your building is using on a daily basis, particularly with the amount of energy that’s being used throughout the day. Begin with those at the top, at a seniority level to show an example to those they manage. They can also delegate the duty of overseeing their own floor or kitchen area to ensure that things are being recycled correctly and to ensure no individuals are overusing stationary and other appliances that use up a lot of energy. As a business, you can offer rewards and incentives and an opportunity to encourage others by creating a green team. Not only that, but it’s something they can add to their resume as having been involved with.
Swap Supplies For Greener Alternatives
Swapping supplies, whether it be stationary or something you use product-wise for greener alternatives is useful to do. It could be using more eco friendly marketing, like changing your suppliers. Or it could be the materials that you use in manufacturing, for example, for environmentally friendly alternatives. An example of how this is currently being tackled is the idea of fast fashion. Fast fashion is where clothing companies are encouraging their customers to change their wardrobes regularly, and it usually coincides with the change in season. This means more individuals are chucking out their clothing much sooner than they might usually do, and that’s bad when that clothing is perfectly wearable. The same can be adapted to your own company and what you use and produce on a daily basis. There’s always a much greener and environmentally-friendly alternative available.
Offer Flexible Working
Flexible working is certainly a way of working that many more businesses are either trying out or implementing as an opportunity to alter the way staff members work. Remote and flexible working doesn’t always work for certain organizations, but it’s something that is worth giving a go just in case it does have some success. The way flexible working is rolled out is normally on a staff by staff basis. Not all staff members should immediately have the luxury of working from home, especially if they’ve only just started. It should really be offered as a reward or if a staff’s personal circumstances change. If they have the ability to work from home, it’s much more business-savvy to give them remote access rather than to just pay them for sitting around at home. They’ll likely welcome the distraction too, but this again is something that should be determined on the individual staff member. From an environmental point of view, flexible working means fewer desktops powered up and using energy. Fewer kettles boiled and papers printed are going to be cutting down on the energy usage to some degree and every little helps.
Lower Your Energy Usage
You can lower your energy usage in a number of ways. Energy monitors might be good to have in your building to keep an eye on what appliances are using the most energy. This might be good to pinpoint then where energy can be saved and where it might be possible to reduce it. You can also get more energy-efficient appliances that will likely run off less power and be more gentle to the environment. Any changes in energy usage will be a great benefit for you as a business because you’ll be saving more money. If it helps, it might be good to have a member of staff, like an operations or buildings manager, do a check of the building each night and to turn off all appliances so there’s a huge drop in energy usage over the time where the building is not in use.
Help The Local Community
The local community may have a number of initiatives in place that encourages their inhabitants to work on making a greener environment. This might be volunteers who go out and collect trash or specific collections that perhaps you as a business can get involved one. One might be to organize a monthly van collection of clothing to give to local shelters and charity shops or to those in need. If that van had your branding on or was known to be provided by yourself, that could help with strengthening your relationship with the locals. Not only that, but that could lead to new customers further down the line.
Businesses can make a real impact and change to the environment, it’s all about getting the motivation to do it. So try to encourage it within your own company and see how much you can change your environment with just small changes.
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