Turn your business green
Kim
Stoddart, founder of Green Rocket (www.greenrocketgroup.com), a social
enterprise dedicated to driving social and environmental change, highlights 10
steps small businesses can take to help them go green.
It
has become the latest fashion for blue chip companies with hefty marketing
budgets to flaunt their green credentials in an effort to attract today's
conscientious consumers.
Whatever
their aims, more and more businesses have begun to consider their environmental
impact and as climate change continues to dominate the public arena, getting a
comprehensive green policy in place is good for your business as well as the
environment.
Sooner
or later all businesses will need to make changes to their working practices in
order to cut their environmental impact so it is better to make genuine changes
now and let your people and customers know that you are a forward thinking
company, rather than just following a trend and making mere token gestures.
But
taking the first step can be difficult and knowing where to start even harder. There
are many things that you can do and a series of small steps can soon add up to
make an impact and get you thinking along the right lines:
Recycle, recycle, recycle
Offices
generate so much waste. Simply installing a recycling bin for paper or
organising a collection scheme can make all the difference. You can also
recycle old computers and office furniture. In Brighton & Hove we use
Magpie (www.magpie.coop) but different areas will have their own local business
waste recycling collection services.
Use public transport
Wherever
possible encourage employees to walk to work or use public transport. Your
could also use public transport to travel to meetings, this makes travelling
time more productive as you can get a lot of work done on the train.
Choose green suppliers
From changing
your energy supplier to a company like Good Energy (www.good-energy.co.uk) to
using a green cleaning company such as Greenyouroffice (www.greenyouroffice.co.uk);
there's an eco alternative for every area of your business.
Bright ideas
Use
energy efficient light bulbs; they cut emissions and save you money. As
technology has advanced, there is now a much wider range available that give
off a quality of light that is just as good as traditional bulbs. Installing a
dimmer switch is another clever way to save energy as it allows for lights to
be adjusted matching requirements.
Switch on to switching off
Ensure
that all lights, PCs and other equipment are tuned off when not in use. A PC
monitor left on overnight wastes enough energy to laser print 800 sheets of A4
paper.
Incentivise your staff
Encourage
your staff to go green; competitions or incentives for employees can make an
impact inside of the office and out. As well as making your staff feel valued
it encourages them to come up with new ideas.
Get the experts in
If
you are serious about going green call in the experts to carbon balance your
business. Companies such as CLEVEL (www.clevel.co.uk)
are a great place to start and will do so authentically.
Use recycled, non bleached paper
It's
not that much more expensive and many companies now offer competitive prices.
Also, if you print documents only when you have to and make sure that you are
printing on both sides then you can also help to cut the amount of paper that
you use in the office.
Switch office supplies to eco
alternatives
To
start with you could get your cleaning company to use products like ecover
instead of traditional industrial alternatives. There has been much research to
suggest that more toxic cleaning products like bleach can have a negative
impact on peoples' health. So it's possible you could be reducing staff sick
leave at the same time.
Change from water cooler to water filter
A
water filter will provide cool water on demand and save the wastage of plastic
water bottles, which, lets face look unsightly anyway when stacked round an
office.
The
water filter will feed into a water dispenser which works, much the same way as
your average cooler. At the same time encouraging people to use glasses rather
than disposable cups will also save waste.
