With the COP26 fresh in everyone’s minds, it’s more important than ever to consider how your business is impacting climate change. What are you doing to minimise your impact on the environment and help build a more sustainable future?
If the answer is not much, now is the time to make some serious changes!
Not only will your efforts contribute to the ongoing health of our planet, but it’s also a real selling point for consumers. Businesses who can show they’re committed to making positive, sustainable change are more likely to capture customer attention.
Luckily for you, lots of initiatives already exist to help businesses decrease their impact on the environment. With rebates and sustainability funding, you could actually end up saving money each month too!
But where to get started? Take a look at our top tips for making your business greener:
Look at your buildings
Are your buildings energy efficient? Have you switched to LED lighting? Are you using cloud servers rather than energy hungry on-site servers? There are lots of things that you can change on your premises to bring your energy consumption and carbon emissions down.
Some key things to consider on your premises are:
- Lighting efficiency – switch to LED bulbs and have light sensors that switch off when no motion is detected
- Heating efficiency – don’t heat empty rooms, invest in energy efficient boilers, and assess your building’s insulation to decrease heat loss
- Migrate to the cloud – remove power guzzling on-site servers and move to a cloud based solution. You’ll also benefit from not having to keep servers cool, so your air con will get a break too
- Invest in on-site renewables – make your own power on site with solar, wind, and ground source heat pumps
Transform your waste
Business waste streams can be completely streamlined to make them much more sustainable. We know that you’re going to produce waste, but there are so many ways to re-use and recycle even the most difficult of materials.
Agecko work with clients to audit their waste and devise bespoke solutions to ensure zero waste is sent to landfill. We help our customers waste less, recycle more, and reap the rewards of rebates. We recently saved one client £50,000 on one single waste stream.
Arrange your no obligation, free waste audit with us today.
Consider your suppliers
No business exists in isolation, we all work with other companies. Review your suppliers and see if there are viable more eco-friendly alternatives you could switch to. Are you using a green energy supplier for your electricity? Sourcing things locally helps cut down on transport emissions as well as shipping costs too.
If you’re sending lots of products out to customers, think about the packaging you’re sending it in. Is it made of sustainable materials and can it easily be recycled at home? Changing how you package your items can make a big difference to your sustainability agenda.
You can also think about your cleaning materials too. Many cleaning products contain harsh chemicals that enter our water systems and contaminate the environment. Switch to eco-friendly alternatives that are just as reliable and kinder to the planet.
Inspire your employees
You need to get your team on side to help your business do its bit to fight climate change. If they leave lights on, fail to switch off computers at the end of the day, or print off every email they’re sent, it’s not very sustainable.
Your business needs to support an eco-conscious culture. Make it easy for your staff to recycle in the office with segregated bins and incentivise walking, cycling and car sharing into work. If it’s possible, allow employees to work flexibly between home and your premises to dramatically cut pollution and road congestion too.
Keep staff motivated by encouraging ideas for changes in the workplace to help increase how sustainable you are.
There are lots of ways you can transform your business to help fight climate change. Let us know if we’ve inspired you by sending us a tweet!
