This is a collaborative post: With documentaries geared around sustainability on the rise, like Netflix’s own ‘Seaspiracy’, it is becoming increasingly apparent that our population needs to start making more effort to preserve our planet for future people. We all need to band together and do our bit to tackle some of the most pressing environmental issues such as climate change, pollution, and deforestation.
Not only does the population need to rise to the challenge, but with modern-day businesses responsible for 70% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions, companies must take steps towards becoming more sustainable too. From the packing process to production, organisations should ensure that every one of their operations is as efficient and environmentally friendly as possible.
As well as taking steps to improve how a business operates, there are several ways that companies can make eco-friendly changes in their day-to-day lives while at work. Below we list several straightforward ways to make your organisation eco-friendlier – keep reading to find out more.
Go Paperless
One of the most wasted manmade resources is paper, with approximately one billion trees worth of paper thrown away each year. One of the biggest culprits for this figure is businesses in the healthcare, finance, insurance, and mortgage sectors since these industries rely heavily on paper usage.
However, it is possible to review how your organisation uses paper and implement a plan to minimise the wastage of this material in the future. While not every business is fortunate enough to be able to ditch paper immediately, there are several ways you can make the process easier and start reaping the benefits of reducing paper.
Contrary to popular belief going paperless doesn’t just help the environment. Still, it can also help businesses reduce costs, save time, boost security, save space, and quickly transfer information while simultaneously promoting the environment. One of the most efficient ways to start your paperless business journey is by creating an e-filing system.
An electronic filing system is a computer-based system for storing, organising, and retrieving documents. It replaces traditional filing systems and their hard-copy paper documents with electronic files stored on individual computers.
Companies can start creating an e-filing system with the help of online tools such as word to PDF converters and PDF compressors. Using tools such as the previously mentioned keeps all documents in the same format, while reducing their size, making the creation of your business e-filing system much more straightforward.
Reward Environmentally Conscious Behaviour
Unfortunately, becoming more eco-friendly doesn’t just happen overnight, and the truth is that it can take time for employees to adapt to the change. Sometimes the best way for employees to stick to something is to use incentives to encourage them to adopt certain behaviours to get praise or a reward.
Not only can incentives be used to get your employees to engage in specific behaviours, but they can also be used to encourage them to stop performing specific actions. Although you may think this will add to overall business expenses, rewarding your employees for environmentally conscious behaviour doesn’t necessarily have to be monetary.
Suppose that you notice an employee using a reusable coffee cup? Or did you witness someone bringing their packed lunch in a reusable container? In this case, you could reward these individuals by buying them lunch the next day, giving them a shout-out on Microsoft Teams, giving them a certificate or letting them park their park outside the front of the building the next day.
On the other hand, if you want to be able to reward employees financially, you could consider giving them a gift card or giving them a percentage of the savings that come from their conservation. Whichever method you choose, it’s bound to get noticed by the employees who aren’t putting in as much effort as others, hopefully encouraging their actions to improve.
Offer Remote Working
Another way to make your organisation more friendly is by allowing employees to work remotely full-time or for a few days a week. As well as boasting environmental benefits, hybrid working can provide your businesses with several benefits that aren’t environmentally conscious such as an increased motivation to work and the production of higher-quality work.
Some of the vital environmental benefits that hybrid working provides are as follows:
- Saves Carbon Monoxide Emissions – Hundreds and hundreds of UK citizens commute into the office daily using various transport options like buses, trains, taxis, and cars. This equates to hundreds of vehicles on the road each day, releasing around 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide yearly. Just think how much pollution could be prevented by allowing just several of your staff members to work from home.
- Saves Energy – If your business is a sizable one, the chances are that you rent or own office space. The cost of renting aside, this office space will also incur other expenses in the form of heating, cooling and lighting. That’s without mentioning all the energy that will be used by appliances like computers, kitchen appliances, bathroom appliances and more. Having fewer people in the office reduces these items’ usage, saving energy and reducing your operational costs.
- Save Office Space – With more employees working remotely than in the office, the need for office space is significantly reduced. Depending on how many staff members you can encourage to work from home, you might be able to get rid of your office space entirely or at least move into a much smaller unit — ultimately helping you reduce your outgoings and save on energy needed for heating, cooling, and lighting the space each year.
Make The Most Of Energy-Saving Technology
In our technology-driven world, new and innovative pieces of tech are constantly being produced to reduce the carbon footprint in our homes and businesses. There are several pieces of energy-saving technology you can add to your office to help save energy. Here are some of the most popular choices for modern-day businesses:
- Smart Meter – Typically seen in households, many UK businesses are starting to use and install smart meters in their offices. Two of the main benefits of installing a smart meter in your office are that it displays your energy consumption in real-time and produces reports to see when your usage might be too high and how you can improve. Like when your employees turn on a fan instead of opening the window.
- Smart Water Meters – A smart water meter operates similarly to a standard smart meter, except it monitors water usage instead of measuring energy and gas. Through a cloud-based system, smart water meters allow you to see water usage per building and can help identify leaks or areas of improvement.
- Smart Lighting – How often have you come into work the next day only to find that several lights or electrical appliances have been left on overnight? We’d be willing to wager that it’s happened more than once. Despite being relatively easy to forget, especially when you’ve had a tedious day at work, failure to shut down all electronics at the end of a working day can cause energy wastage and unnecessary drainage of funds. Fortunately, most offices are fitted with motion-detecting lights nowadays, meaning that lights are automatically turned off if a room has been unoccupied for several minutes – preventing the waste of any unneeded electricity.