Kim Stoddart Founder and Managing Director of Green Rocket (www.greenrocketgroup.com), highlights ten steps that green businesses can take to ensure they stay ahead of their game and operate more sustainably.

Green-thinking companies will have already assessed all areas of your operation to become more sustainable; however this doesn’t mean you should stop there. Even if you have already made a lot of changes, there is always more that can be done, the key is to keep looking for innovative ways of evolving.

Here are ten steps that already green companies can consider in order to further address their environmental impact:

Assess and reassess

To ensure that your office and workforce are continuing to be as sustainable as possible it is important to conduct regular green audits of the premises and practices.

This will allow you to keep up-to-date with the steps you already have in place to reduce the impact of your business and to ensure they are being actioned as well as they can be, as well as giving you a clearer picture of how to build upon them. Even the greenest business still has room for improvement.

Involve employees

Ask your people if they have any ideas for the office or operations that could help to improve the business’ environmental credentials. The more people that feed in their ideas, the more creative and innovative solutions will evolve as a result.

Green champions

Nominating an employee/ employees as a ‘green champion/s’ will allocate responsibility to ensure green measures are enforced as well as being constantly developed.

A green champion can educate other members of staff and organise activities, incentives or events with an environmental angle to help raise awareness in the workplace.

Organise regular workshops

A central part of encouraging people to take action over global warming and other environmental issues involves a process of education.

Workshops and events will help your people to understand why we all need to be making changes and may provide the inspiration and motivation that are required to encourage engagement and participation.

Regularly assess suppliers

Businesses should regularly reconsider their suppliers for their green credentials, as well as service levels and research the market to ensure that there aren’t any other companies supplying the same services or products with better environmental credentials.

Stay in the know

Keeping up-to-date with the latest developments in environmentally helpful technology and initiatives is an essential part of ensuring your businesses is moving with the times.

Monitoring the press as well as business and industry websites is a good way to ensure you remain on the ball. This is something your green champions can be encouraged to do as they get into the habit of sending around a quick email alerting others to the news.

Outside initiatives

Businesses can set up a programme that encourages their workforce to volunteer for local community projects or charities, enabling the individual to work out of the office for a day whilst still getting paid.

This type of initiative not only reflects positively on your business and is great for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), it also benefits employees, gives something back to the community and is great for morale and productivity.

Think more like a social enterprise

The social enterprise handbook is one all businesses could take a leaf or two out of. Channelling a percentage of your company’s profits back into the community or environmentally concerned projects is a great way to promote a sustainable future.

Pool your efforts

Researching like-minded companies in your area and meeting to discuss ways of working together can be very useful. Pooling your resources will enable you to have a much bigger impact; helping other companies in the sector as well as your own will reinforce that you are all working in the same direction.

Make a commitment

Set achievable goals for your business and make a pledge to do something quantifiable, whether it is on your website, directly to your customers or even just a promise to your team.

Realising your commitment in this way will ensure that green issues remain at the top of your agenda as you achieve your aims. It also shows that you are genuinely committed rather than merely paying lip service to environmental issues.

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By Kim Stoddart  on   Jul 10,2008

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Keywords

green business    corporate social responsibility    social enterprise    recycling    carbon footprint    save money   

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