7 Tips For Building A More Sustainable Business
In the present day and age, it’s impossible to ignore the growing climate crisis - signs are all around us. There are many reasons why you should be thinking about building and growing a sustainable business - not only is it good for the planet, it’s good for customers and investors. That is because it’s in everyone’s interest to create and foster respect for the planet, to protect the future.
It’s understood that customers are buying more sustainably than ever before, and it’s part of their decision-making process when it comes to shopping. So, it stands to reason that to ensure your products or services are purchased, you should be thinking about your business’s sustainability credentials.
As a business owner you might be asking yourself, what can I do? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Read on to learn about how you can start building a more sustainable business.
First thing’s first, it’s time to take stock of your current situation by conducting a sustainability audit. This means taking a look at your own business’s practices with best practices for sustainability in your category. This is something you can do in-house with an online tool - it doesn’t have to be an incredibly complex process, but it’s brilliant at showing areas where you can improve. Alternatively, it’s possible to hire an external consultancy who will undertake the process for you, for a fee.
Now that you’ve taken a look at your business’s sustainability, you can start to plan for future successes and changes. Having a thorough plan can help to keep you and your business focused on the future and enable you to take logical steps to reduce your impact on the environment. This is something that you can do yourself by writing down your goals, KPIs, and the implementation plan for getting things done. Should you need any help, there are a number of online tools that you can use to help you.
After the past couple of years, more and more work is being done at home. And for good reason - not only is it good for employees, but it’s also good for the planet. There’s less and less reason to physically be in the office now as lots of work is done from home and video conferencing tools have become so good. It gives your employees more of a work-life balance as they don’t have to commute into the office, which therefore has a positive impact on the environment. This is because it means fewer cars and buses stuck in traffic, and therefore less carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. Win-win.
As a first step, discover how much energy you’re actually using by checking your meter or installing a smart meter. This will arm you with information about what energy you use, so you can cut down in the future. There are some simple steps you can take to reduce your energy usage, such as ensuring heating and lighting is on timers to make sure you’re not using energy when no one is in the office. Additionally, when it comes to lighting your office, consider switching to LED lightbulbs, which are a more energy-efficient way to light your offices.
You can take this process one step further by switching your energy supplier over to renewable energy. This is a simple way to reduce the carbon footprint of your business and it can make a huge difference to the sustainability of your company.
Businesses produce waste: fact. What’s important to think about when you’re working to become more sustainable is how you can reduce the amount of waste you produce, and what you do with the waste that you do produce. One simple step is to start recycling simple, frequently used materials such as paper, plastics, and tech.
When looking at the waste that you do have - consider where it’s going. Is there a special collection service that you can use that will sort through and recycle waste even further? Or is it time to learn more about your waste going into modern landfills that can actually help to protect the environment?
One important step toward becoming a more sustainable business is to engage your workforce. With all the will in the world, you can’t convince staff members to recycle their plastics or to reduce the amount of paper they don’t want to, because you’re not always going to be standing behind their shoulders. So, what you need to do is to get them on board with your sustainability plan. The way you do that depends on the size and culture of your business, but there are some ways to go about it:
Have an all-staff meeting to kick off initiatives
Create posters to encourage staff to make sustainable choices
Appoint sustainability officers to help you with your work
You can make the move to sustainable materials for packaging, products, and marketing materials. In the present day, there are so many exciting, sustainable options to choose from that are biodegradable, recycled, or organic.
When it comes to packaging, you should also consider reducing how much packaging you send. Obviously, it’s important to ensure that nothing is broken or damaged in transit, but if you can ensure that products are sent carefully, but with as little packaging as possible, this is a good sustainability - and cost-effective - way to work. This move can make a huge difference to the sustainability of your business and is a demonstration of your sustainability credentials when shipping products to customers in recycled packaging.
Hopefully, this article has provided you with some inspiration for ways to make your business more sustainable. As you can see, by making incremental changes, you can create and grow a successful, sustainable business.
