Tips for Small Businesses on Going Green

With the increasing frequency of natural disasters and rising sea levels the result of our ongoing consumption of natural resources, society’s unsustainable practices are becoming more and more difficult to ignore. As a result, public behaviours and mentalities are changing rapidly - this includes consumers increasingly turning to companies who care for the environment, which in turn are becoming more and more numerous. Indeed, rather than a trend, this is a matter of the survival of the planet.

Change for the better can come at all levels, and while it will be of greater impact from the larger political entities, including large corporations, small businesses can still make a difference and enact the change they want to see in the environment. In fact, there are multiple advantages to being a small, ‘green’ business: without the same budgets and strategic infrastructure as Big Business, adopting environmentally-friendly policies will be seen by customers as a more genuine decision. Meanwhile, large companies who appear to take on the mantle of the environment but only implement novelty policies, perhaps while also being a big polluter, are seen to be ‘greenwashing’, or using the environment not as a moral standpoint but as a marketing technique.

There are also economic benefits associated with cutting down on your carbon footprint. For many, these moves have been hugely successful and will likely remain in place as business models adapt to the changing environment and the wider societal shift to green living. Here are a few suggestions of practices to adopt in your green business.

Waste

With all of these measures, it is best to take small, actionable steps that are easier to digest by stakeholders, but preventing the unnecessary production of waste by your business is probably the easiest. This includes switching the material for your disposables from things that do not degrade like plastic to paper, recycling printer ink cartridges, composting of organic waste, reusing water where possible and encouraging drinking water from flasks or glasses rather than plastic bottles. Try to incentivise rather than demand this from your employees, while at the same time precluding the potential for waste by implementing change from the top-down - for example, switching coffee cup material and adding bins for organic waste and inorganic recycling.

Adopting the habit of upcycling can have many benefits for your business also – this is increasing the material worth of waste matter by employing it to new uses. For example, some businesses are even using sustainable, upcycled material for the construction of new infrastructure.

Electricity

In many cases, the electricity consumption of a small business might not be something that can be reduced easily, for example, if it is involved with manufacturing, but even then there is always something that can be done. This includes making sure lights, computers, screens, machines, etc. in rooms that are not being used are switched off and not in standby mode. For lightbulbs in particular, it is advisable to switch from incandescent bulbs to CFLs or LEDs, which use less energy.

Transport

Cutting down your company’s carbon footprint extends to how employees get to work. This won’t always be possible, and again incentives over demands here, but encourage where it makes sense that workers use environmentally-friendly means of getting around, such as taking public transport and cycling. This extends to deliveries, which for raw materials is a tall order, but for things like food, it is preferable to import groceries grown and produced within a 100-mile radius, which helps support local farmers whilst also preventing emissions.

While small, the result of all these practices will reduce your businesses’ strain on Earth’s natural resources, and will help to meet present ecological, societal and economic needs without irreversibly compromising these factors for future generations.