Easy Ways to Make your Business Way More Environmentally Friendly

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If you are sick and tired of not doing your part for the environment, then you have nothing to worry about. There are plenty of ways that you can help to improve your business practices and by following the below tips, you can be sure to save money and boost your overall efficiency.

Utilise Natural Light

When you work in a traditional office or even at home, it is so important that you do everything you can to utilize natural light. This will help you to conserve energy and it will also help you to lessen your carbon footprint. If you want to help yourself here, then you need to make sure that all of your windows are unobstructed so that you can let in as much as possible. It also helps to use light timers or motion sensors. When you do this, you can easily make the lights go out if there is nobody is in the room.

Invest in some Desk Lamps

If you don’t have a lot of people in your office or if you know that you have people coming in at different times, then why not consider investing in desk lamps? This will save you a lot more money when it comes to powerful overhead lighting and it will also help you to light your office in accordance to who is using the office at the time.

Consider Paperless Billing

You have to make sure that any accounts you have are signed up for paperless billing. This will help you to get statements via email or even through your online account. You might also want to make sure that you are making the effort to invoice your own customers online. When you do this, you encourage other people to do the same and you may even find that your own business expenses are lowered as a result.

Print Essentials

Before you print out your documents, make sure that you actually need a paper copy. If you end up printing documents that you don’t need then this will make it way harder for you to save money at a later date. If you need a backup of any document, then consider using the cloud instead. When you do, you will soon find that you can access whatever you need from any device. This is way better than printing out 5+ paper copies every time and you may even find that you can keep better track of your files too. If you do need to print out paper copies, try and do it in black and white as much as possible. This will save you money on colour cartridges.

Reusable Bottles

If you give out bottles of water to your team while they are working, then this is great. You will be helping them to stay hydrated and you will also be encouraging them to drink something on a regular basis. If you want to help your business to become even more environmentally friendly, then it helps to distribute reusable bottles or even thermoses to your team. They can then refill

those instead. If you want to step things up to that next level, then you may want to consider using rainwater to water any outdoor plants or office plants you have. Tuffa Tanks are great for things like this.

Remove your Business from any Mailing Lists

If you find that your business gets a ton of junk mail, then take the time to remove yourself from their listing. While you are doing this, it’s also worth looking into your own business mail too. You may be able to save a ton of money by sending out less direct mail. Update your mailing list and make sure that it doesn’t include anybody who has not done business with you in the past. This can save you time, money and even paper too.

Monitor your Electronics

Whenever you aren’t using a device, you need to make sure that it is turned off. If it isn’t, or if it is on standby then it will still be using up energy. It helps to also make sure that you activate sleep, or hibernation modes on all of your computers too. This will turn off the display when it is not used for a few minutes or more. This is ideal for when your team goes on their lunch break or if you have a computer that gets used by a lot of different people at various times of the day.  If you want to boost your efforts even more then it is a good idea for you to invest in energy-efficient models. This will cut down on the amount of energy each device uses during its lifetime and you can easily save a huge amount by doing this.

Plus, nowadays, any of your old electronics can be recycled so do not throw them out with the rest of your business waste. Thanks to companies such as Premier Surplus, e-waste recycling solutions have never been more accessible. Consequently, you can learn more about some of the different e-waste recycling options over on the Premier Surplus website here: https://www.premiersurplus.com/

In-Person Meetings

If your team needs to travel to meetings for your company then it’s worth trying to limit them as much as possible. This will save them petrol money and it will also reduce the emissions that are released into the environment as the result of your own business practice. If you still need to have meetings then it’s a good idea for you to try and conduct them online, or even arrange to have a bus to take your team where they need to be.

Collect Paper

If you can, you should always make sure that your business is recycling as much paper as possible. If you don’t then you may find that you are contributing to the landfill sites that are all across the country and this is the last thing that you need. Start by recycling paper, and then work your way up to plastics and other materials. This will help you to do your part for the environment and it will also give you the chance to set an example for your team. If you have ink cartridges, then you can have them refilled instead of buying new ones too and this can help you even more.