The Good, the Bad and the Environmentally Friendly in Business

Many businesses are guilty of using too much energy and creating too much waste in the workplace. This not only hurts the environment, but it can also be expensive – and it can hurt your brand image.

If you want to cut your bills and help the environment at the same time, you might need to make some positive changes at work.

What Businesses Do Wrong

A lot of businesses do not follow good eco-friendly practices. They throw away too much waste, use too much power and print too much. Greenpeace has named and shamed corporations that do not do enough to address environmental impacts. They have graded

them on specifications being clear on eco practises, transparency and echo friendly technology.

Both large and small businesses make these mistakes with smaller businesses failing to care for the environment in their day-to-day operations, hurting the planet and their budgets.

Steps Your Business Can Take to Become More Eco-Friendly

There are many steps that businesses of all sizes can take to become more eco-friendly. Here are some of the simplest to implement:

• Print fewer documents in the workplace. Do you print emails? Stop right now! Save them on your server instead. When you are tempted to print off a document to circulate, create a PDF instead and send it via email or Slack and save paper, ink and money.

• Recycle your waste paper. Most businesses throw away a lot of paper, and while sometimes this is unavoidable, always try to recycle it rather than throwing it in the bin.

• You can cut costs further by using cardboard balers and recycling compactors, which can reduce the cost of your waste disposal by cutting the number of waste collections required.

• Turn off computers at night. A whole office of computers uses a lot of power, so turn off computers and other equipment, remove chargers and leave everything off until the morning.

• Replace your lights with LED lights. These use much less power and last longer, cutting waste on two fronts.

• Buy used furniture. Save money on new desks, chairs and filing cabinets by getting used items instead, which can often be in great condition. Consider buying refurbished computers too.

• Consider making larger changes like installing double glazing and improving insulation to cut your office heating bill.

Get Everyone Involved

Your eco-friendly practices are only going to work if everyone gets involved, so get your staff on board. Leave notes reminding them to only print if necessary, share information on the intranet, encourage people to use less, give prizes for whoever recycles the most, bring up the topic in meetings and try to get people enthusiastic about saving the environment.

If you get everyone involved and keen to help, you’ll stand a much better chance of making a real and positive difference in the workplace.

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