How Can Business Be More Eco Friendly?

Good starter advice for co's looking to add our triple-bottom line style.

How Can Business Be More Eco Friendly?

by Ned Haluzan 

 

The world is striving to be a greener place with many people actively opting to reduce their own personal carbon footprint. But it shouldn’t stop there. Businesses can play a large part in helping to reduce pollution and contribute to a greener, more economically friendly environment for everyone. In our latest post we have decided to look at some easy to achieve ways that businesses can actively reduce their carbon footprint and contribute to a better environment.

How Can Business Be More Eco Friendly?
The world is striving to be a greener place with many people actively opting to reduce their own personal carbon footprint. But it shouldn’t stop there. Businesses can play a large part in helping to reduce pollution and contribute to a greener, more economically friendly environment for everyone. In our latest post we have decided to look at some easy to achieve ways that businesses can actively reduce their carbon footprint and contribute to a better environment.

Lighting
One of the main ways that your business can reduce its impact on the environment is to change the lighting throughout your building to incorporate LEDs. LED lights typically last 25 times longer than standard incandescent bulbs while also using around 75% less energy which means they are a great way to not only save money but to also reduce your impact on the environment. The more lights that you switch to LEDs the more money you could potentially save as the running cost of an LED is far less when compared to incandescent bulbs.

Recycling
The European Environment Agency has set its members a target of recycling 50% of waste by 2020. While the UK is currently on track to achieve these targets there is always room for improvement and businesses can really help contribute to help achieve these targets. One key area of recycling that is often over looked is that of computers. Each year in the UK around 1.3 million tonnes of gadgets are thrown away and end up on the scrap heap but specialist recycling companies such as AWA Refiners can actually take your old and unwanted computer and help recycle them. This process is ideal for companies who are looking to upgrade a lot of hardware at once and are unsure of what to do with their old computers.

Become A Paperless Office
There are many benefits to becoming a paperless office and it’s not just to reduce your environmental impact. Firstly you will create more space without having large files or storage cabinets lying around. Secondly reducing the use of your printer and their expensive ink cartridges will have a positive effect on your office budget! It is estimated that around 50% of all office waste going into landfills is paper and if everyone switched to a paperless system then it could save around 1.4 trillion pounds of paper as well as a lot of CO2 emissions!

Encourage Carpooling
One of the biggest environmental challenges that the world faces is trying to encourage people to use their cars less often. Some companies have been able to offer incentives to their employees with the Government backed cycle to work scheme. You could look to offer some sort of incentive for those who carpool and it doesn’t even need to be financial, something as simple as being able to park closer to the building could help encourage lift sharing to work.