How Businesses Can Improve Their Environmental Credentials
It’s a pretty simple state of affairs, one that a staggering 96% of the scientific community agree with; climate change is poised to impact every aspect of our lives, heating the Earth, affecting weather patterns, causing mass extinctions, destroying economies and generally leaving human civilisation in a rather awful state.
This is, of course, only set to occur if the world does nothing to solve the problem, however if we do take it on ourselves to make our activities more environmentally friendly, we can weather the climate storm, and be all the more better for it! Businesses, naturally, are one of the main drivers behind this change, but in what ways can business owners make their operations more environmentally amicable?
Recycle
Many businesses that are formed around the buying and selling of large home wares – white goods, beds, mattresses etc – can reduce the size of their climatic footprint by running recycling services within their operations. Take online bed retailer Bedstar, for instance. Here, customers can pay a small fee in order to get their old beds and mattresses picked up by the company and sent to a recycling point, saving huge amounts of carbon and materials in the process that would otherwise be sent to landfill.
Work Remotely
Most workers will have to either hop on to public transport or get in their cars whenever they need to get to work, and bosses, in most cases, will travel even further distances, burning more fuel and releasing more carbon in the process. To get rid of this carboniferous expenditure, think about allowing your employees to simply work from home for a few days each week. Transport costs will be hugely reduced, energy won’t be used in the heating and lighting of a large office, and your employees will probably be far happier as a result, given the lack of the rat race humdrum.
Go Paperless
Although it is possible to source one’s wood-based business materials from sustainable sources, energy is still required when creating and recycling paper, making the process carbon intensive in general. The solution? Get rid of all of that paper and go fully computed. You’ll save money and the environment in tandem.
Install Renewables
If you have spare roofing space or a car park that can support them, solar panels or small wind turbines could be installed on your business’ site. The thing that is so great about renewable energy generation systems is that you can sell back the excess energy you generate, pushing down bills whilst you help the Earth!
Know of any other climate-saving ideas businesses can cotton on to? Let us know what they are in the comments section.
About the Author Staff Writer
Our writers come from all over the world, but one thing unites them - their passion for sustainability.