Making your business green is one thing, but how do you prevent inefficiencies creeping in over time? Tom Gorman owner of The TDG Group, a print management and creative services company, has the answers.

1. Ensure everyone in the business believes in what you’re doing

Not everyone will share the same moral agenda, but there’s no point in the management team taking decisions which affect the brand if employees do not support their vision.

Before you do anything else, implement an employee engagement exercise with clear internal communications and you’ll reap greater rewards.

2. Be realistic about how many changes you can make

We would all love to live in an ideal world – but we don’t. Your company’s existing infrastructure and financial health will determine the degree to which you can make changes, so work with it and incorporate long-term and short-term measures into your plans.

3. Don’t just pay lip-service when going green

How many brands have put ‘green’ at the top of their marketing and PR agenda only for it to sink rapidly to the bottom once the novelty has worn off/the challenges prove too great/legislation changes?

If you’re committed to doing it, treat it like any other business objective and see it through to its logical conclusion.

4. Put your supply chain under the spotlight

Unless you’re self-sufficient, the chances are your business will have some sort of supply chain. Check that your suppliers follow the same (or similar) code of conduct as you otherwise aligning yourself to them could undermine your green efforts.

5. Be innovative

By pledging to improve your green credentials, you are not restricting the options available to your company. The change in mindset can in fact encourage innovation and creative thinking and inject a breath of fresh air into your business.

6. Carbon footprints are complicated

Just as green beans from Kenya are not necessarily less environmentally friendly than their home-grown relatives, be aware that there are multiple factors to consider when calculating the carbon footprint of the materials you use. Global manufacture, production and import aren’t necessarily the bad guy.

7. Ethics should also play a part.

Switching to recycled paper is an admirable gesture, but if you’re trading with suppliers that promote unethical working practices, it’s also an empty gesture.

Part of putting your supply chain under the spotlight is to ensure that you’re know who you’re working with and how closely their ethics match yours.

8. Collaboration can pay dividends

There are myriad opportunities for companies to improve their green credentials but it can seem like a Herculean task when you’re starting out.

Talk to your peers and colleagues to discover what their approach has been and if there are opportunities to work together for the greater good, then go for it. It’s likely that you’ll save time and money without it affecting your competitive advantage.

9. Don’t write off print without investigation – it can be green!

By reducing waste, recycling wherever possible and using materials derived from sustainable sources, it is becoming easier than ever to produce printed materials that have minimal impact on the environment.

And as with point six, it’s easy to assume that online is ecologically sounder than print, but this isn’t necessarily the case.

10. ‘Greening’ your brand should not be a tactical measure.

If you let yourself think of it in those terms, it will never take root within every function of your business, which it has to. But, make it a solid tickbox on your operational checklist and it will soon become second nature.

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By Tom Gorman  on   Jul 10,2008

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Keywords

green business    corporate social responsibility    print    recycling    carbon footprint    save money   

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