This is a guest post
Saving energy in the workplace makes sense from both a cost and ‘green credentials’ perspective. There are plenty of ways to better manage business energy too, many of which require minimal input or cost.
Firstly turn off any office equipment when it’s not being used to save valuable business electricity. This applies to PC monitors, printers, lights and other unused items that are otherwise running on standby. The positive effects on business energy can be huge – the Carbon Action Trust have estimated that even switching off a single computer overnight, during bank holidays and at weekends, can save business electricity.
As well as turning off lights, replace wasteful bulbs or strip lighting with energy efficient models. These last for longer and are significantly less wasteful. Apply a similar discipline to dripping taps in staff kitchens and bathrooms – constantly dripping taps waste money too! Make sure staff are turning off taps and get a handyman to fix drips and leaks. Finally, at the risk of annoying staff, save serious business electricity by turning down thermostats or air conditioning. Open windows are healthier and promote energy and air circulation around the office – far more satisfying than breathing in recycled air.
Make serious savings on business energy by partnering with other local businesses to share premises and raw goods, recycle unused items or sell on waste to be reused as raw materials. Innovation and entrepreneurial thinking has turned waste into viable business opportunities for more than one company! Also speak to your utility company about buy back schemes for any products or services that you don’t fully use- there may be business energy savings to make here too and you can find different providers online.
Look at your company car fleet – fuel cards, reduced meeting attendance or a move to virtual meetings can help your carbon footprint as a company, as well as your vehicle maintenance and staff fuel expense costs. Install videoconferencing, or simply stamp out the culture of endless meetings, especially if you operate across sites. Train delivery staff too in economic driving and set incentives and rewards for drivers that can make efficiencies.
At the same time, start to build a greener culture more fundamentally into your business culture. Encourage staff to ‘own’ the culture and suggest improvements. These could include things such as recyclable printer cartridges, a move away from plastic cups, a self-imposed ban or reduction policy on printing, a recycling and waste management scheme within the office and other measures.
Also, look for government support on initiatives to cut business energy usage – loans and grants are often available for new technologies. And switch your utility provider using a comparison site to find the cheapest business electricity.
It could be well worth using a site to find alternative, cheaper suppliers, or greener suppliers offering more environmentally friendly forms of business energy supply.
Finally, tell your customers about what you’re doing. Green marketing is a powerful tool and many businesses find that customers will increasingly seek out green providers and environmentally friendly companies – so these measures can impact the bottom line in more ways than one! Promote it on your website, in your company literature, in your marketing materials and make sure it forms part of your PR strategy. It’s a core part of many business plans and certainly green thinking will continue to make an ever greater impact in our lives moving forward. The further ahead of the curve you can be the better. It will position your business as credible in its field and committed to carbon reduction and
the green agenda.
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