Updated: Aug 09, 2024 By: Marios
Businesses in this current place and time face a lot of scrutiny. That scrutiny comes from a variety of different areas but when it comes to the environment and how sustainable your business is, could be the difference between a customer buying from you, or buying from your competitor.
Being sustainable is certainly something that can be helpful to the environment and for future generations to come. There are a lot of brownie points to be won when it comes to sustainability and if you’re able to deliver that moreso with your business, then there’s only more opportunity for success to be had.
Let’s take a look at how you could maximize your sustainability as a business in 2024.
Go paperless within the business
One of the biggest impacts to the environment when it comes to the average business, is its paper use. The amount of paper used within offices to production facilities alike is huge. There’s so much waste and a lot of it is simply unnecessary, especially with the digital devices we have at our fingertips.
Not everything needs to be printed. In fact, nothing really needs to be printed nowadays other than say, marketing materials and information required to put up around the workplace.
Going paperless is a great step forward when it comes to offering sustainability. While it might be a it of a challenge to do it, it is possible.
Start off by noting where all of the paper is being used and in which parts of the business you can start to guinea pig the paperless movement. While it’s often good to just rip the bandaid off, not every worker might be willing to embrace the paperless movement to begin with.
Reduce, reuse, and recycle
The three R’s – reduce, reuse, recycle. It’s something to live by as a business and it’s helpful to encourage a green team to form within the business to help monitor this activity.
Reducing your consumption as a business is helpful. For example, being more selective in the equipment purchased or the potential waste contributed by your business and staff on a daily basis, is helpful.
When it comes to finding ways of reusing the stuff you own as a business, there are often opportunities to make more from what you were looking to get rid of. Sustainability is not just about being able to sustain your business by its own merit but by doing things that will only help to contribute towards a healthier environment.
And finally, recycle. Nowadays, most things can be recycled so there’s really no excuse. Whether it’s technology to food waste, look at what can be recycled and organize such recycling collections with the relevant companies.
Educate your teams
Educating your teams is an important one when it comes to sustainability. While not all team members might be so willing to embrace education, it’s something that can at the very least be provided to everyone when the subject is about the environment and sustainability.
How you can help as a business, also extends to your employees too, so offering training can be a useful way of maximizing your impact as a whole. You could go that bit further and offer any staff members who might fit the bill for a new role within the company, a masters in sustainability.
Sustainability as a career prospect will likely only grow in popularity as the need to be self-sufficient grows. So with that being said, inject some extra budget into your staff training so that you can continue to provide your staff with learning opportunities in this area.
Make use of green energy systems
Green energy systems are becoming more popular, like solar panels for example. As a business, it’s only right to try and embrace these greener energy systems in order to reduce your carbon footprint.
As a business, your output is going to be much more significant than that of an average household. Because of this – you’re held to a higher standard and expectation.
So, with that in mind, try to be more conscious of what energy systems you can embrace as a business in order to cut down that energy consumption over time.
Provide sustainable packing
Sustainable packaging is something that can be highly beneficial for a business to do. With packaging, a lot of what you get nowadays from businesses is made from recycled materials. That’s why you should be heading in the same direction with your business if you haven’t been already.
What constitutes sustainable packaging? Well, recyclable PET plastics, cardboard, and paper are all considered sustainable because they can be reprocessed into new items.
Think about what options are available to you and how you might want to utilize this packaging for your own business moving forward. Even small efforts and changes within packaging can make a big difference and impact the environment. It’s also something that will be noticed by those around you, including your customers.
Work with green suppliers
As a business, the more you can do to influence the wider impact you have as a business, the better. One of the ways in which you can do this is by only working with green suppliers. You’ve got a pick of the bunch when it comes to suppliers, which is why you shouldn’t really be settling for any suppliers who simply don’t care about the environment.
When you don’t care about the environment, you don’t get the respect from those who do. As a business, you can do a lot more to help, even if it’s not directly from your business internally. Working with green suppliers is helpful, so you should certainly make use of them where possible.
Maximizing sustainability as a business should be your goal for 2024. Take a leaf out of sustainability and implement it into your business this year. Who knows, you might be one of many who makes a real difference to the future of the world that many generations will get to enjoy.
