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Running a green business makes good sense financially and reputation-wise. Consumers are inclined to prefer a company that is ready to show how it is taking measures to protect environmental resources, ensure the well-being of both employees and those who supply the company and is constantly revising its approaches to make them more aligned with minimizing emissions and harm to the environment.
The greening of businesses is a great thing for the environment and for the world’s carbon footprint. One key for businesses is learning how to follow three R’s: reduce, reuse and recycle. In addition, knowing what your competitors are doing to become greener is something to stay aware of. Becoming green as a business is not a one-off change; it's an ongoing endeavor that requires constant learning and revising, along with a willingness to admit mistakes. Ultimately though, your business's bottom line will be better for the changes.
Steps
- Avoid confusing doing business in a green way with being a charity. Business is about making a profit, even with a socially minded approach to profit-making. Whatever changes your business makes to be green, always check that you remain competitive with non-green businesses. To stay successful, a green business must produce products or services that people want, that are well designed, appealing and work as stated.
- Keep abreast of legislative changes and consumer concerns.
- Run your business as a profitable concern; don't throw all caution to the wind to turn green. Do things by increments, or use the Japanese kaizen method, little by little, so that you know what works and what doesn't without destroying your company's financial resources.
- Be wary of immature or ineffective technologies. Check thoroughly into the backgrounds of those selling green products for your company, especially where large sums of money are involved.
- Ask lots of questions. Ask how the changes will improve your business. Ask how the products and services being promoted to you will deliver on what they promise. Find out about the chain of production; you don't want to buy new items only to discover they're being made in another part of the world in cramped and deadly working conditions––your company's ethos must travel the whole way through from cradle-to-cradle.
- Keep building your green business reputation. As part of this, trust is also a big factor, so having independent green accreditation on a product or service can reassure customers that your business is honest and the "real thing", saving them time in having to check up in your claims.
- If you're a start-up, rather than an established company, do your research into green approaches as thoroughly as your research into how to start your business. You may be able to take more risks than an established country when going green from the start but still use your common sense and be frugal. After all, many good green ideas are based on frugality!
- Read the advice of other green start-ups before embarking on your endeavor. There are some great books by eco-preneurs and social entrepreneurs available for you to learn from. Read about what they did and learn from their errors so that you can build on what they've already done.
- Whatever you do, make sure your business plan is sound and nobody can shoot holes through it. Just because your company is "green" doesn't mean people will rush to support you without you providing what you've promised.
Create a green strategy for your business
- Begin by looking for the inefficiencies and measuring your business's current carbon and ecological footprints. You need to know what isn't so green now and where you want the business to be in a year, two years and in future years. You can use calculators or get specialists in to make measurements. And be sure to treat this as simply a start––your business isn't green just because you measured it.
- Create a green strategy. You need to know where you are now and when you want the business to be in the future and what resources, tools and approaches will be used to get there. A strategy can be as simple or as complex as you want but it needs to be workable and based in reality. There are plenty of business books on creating business strategies, as well as ones on green business strategies, so be sure to read up on these and use the advice for creating your business's.
- As part of this, decide whether you will do more than just green your premises and practices. Does your business want to move into creating green products and services as well (if it doesn't already)?
Reduce your business's overall consumption
- Decide where you can cut back. This is probably the most cautious and most effective beginning point for any established business in terms of starting to go green and it can start saving your company money fairly quickly, giving you incentive to keep going. Some suggestions for getting started include:
- Observe what your business uses and wastes, such as energy, supplies and other materials. Make sure you look at all aspects of your business and start a list of areas where you can cut down.
- Look at the company's paper usage. How much paper does your business use daily? Can you cut down on your paper use? Try switching to digital procedures to invoice your clients and pay your bills. Scan in important contracts and email them rather than printing them and putting them in the mail. Discourage staff in your office from printing every email or even other documentation. Instead, teach workers how to sort their emails, so they don’t have to rely on hard copies. Encourage them to read on screen––it's a skill, not a talent, and one that each person can learn. When printing is necessary, use both sides of the paper. To make sure people remember this, it's helpful if you set your printer to automatically print double sided. You can also program your fax machine not to print out confirmation pages.
- Check your business's appliances and machinery for energy efficiency and ongoing reliability. Another area where you can possibly reduce consumption and waste is your business' appliances or machinery. Make sure that all of your equipment is up-to-date and working properly to make sure that it isn't wasting energy or resources. Even if it's not so new but does a great job, keeping it in top condition through regular servicing, etc., can ensure it's eco-friendliness.
- Be sure to properly train your employees on using the equipment that they need to use. This will help to ensure workers don't make mistakes or waste resources.
- Keep an eye out for updates to software that can make your computing systems more efficient.
- Keep facilities and utilities in good shape. Even the things your company isn't using directly to make products or selling can be energy suckers and resource wasters.
- Check things like faucets and toilets. If you have a leaky faucet or a cracked toilet, get it fixed. That way, they won't be wasting water all day and night. and employees and clients won't be worried about using such facilities.
- Make sure that your staff turns off all the lights and equipment at the end of the day to avoid wasting energy when no one is at work. It's helpful to assign someone to be responsible for this daily. Put up signs around the workplace to remind everyone. After a quarter or a year, put up charts showing a comparison of energy savings thanks to employee's efforts; this will help to motivate them to keep doing it.
- Switch to energy efficient appliances and uses. Compact fluorescent bulbs use 15 to 20 percent of the energy of an incandescent bulb, last longer and produce as much light.
- Find out if your state has any 'green rebates' or incentives for energy reduction. Many states will help you with appliance replacements, light bulb replacements, insulation, window replacements, etc.
Reuse what you have
- Make a list of things around your business that you could easily reuse. It is probable that there will be many things, even ones you haven't thought of before. Some examples include:
- Again, paper is a good place to start. Did you know that paper constitutes about 35 percent of the world’s waste? And it's so easy to reduce, reuse and recycle. Start a scrap bin for paper, that way people in your office can use paper scraps rather than notebooks.
- Consider your staff room, or break room. This area is full of opportunities for you to reuse. Stop supplying paper and plastic dishes and utensils. Purchase glass dishes and real silverware and encourage employees to use them and to clean them after use. Purchase reusable coffee filters and mugs for the morning coffee. For catering purposes, if washing up is not an option, prefer disposable items made from corn, potatoes or other plant sources, that break down in the compost. In fact, add a bokashi (indoor compost) to your workplace to encourage workers to add their lunch scraps to it.
- Consider getting a battery charger so that workers can reuse the batteries for their work related equipment. Try purchasing used and refurbished equipment, or you can donate your old equipment. Some areas have also started reusable office supply exchanges where businesses can literally drop off their surplus office supplies and pick through other’s surplus office supplies for free.
Recycle what you can
- Make recycling easy by placing a well-labeled recycling bin next to every trash can. Put extra recycling bins in the break room, by the copy machine and in the mail room to encourage your employees to recycle rather than just throwing stuff away.
- Educate your staff on the ways that they can recycle at the office to help you become a green business. Some easy things to start recycling are paper, plastic and aluminum cans. Make sure your staff knows where they can find the recycling bins and what goes in them.
Involve staff
- Get your staff on board and you'll have both a motivated team and even some evangelists who will take the greening further than you can do alone. Staff engagement is vital for long-term success and they can help to spread the word to other staff, clients and through networks.
- Explain to staff what is hoped for by way of continual improvement. Make sure that they all understand the commitment to continual improvement.
- Consider creating a committee for greening your business. Choose people already interested in this change along with those who have the power to implement changes (whether or not they're convinced yet). Ideas need to be tested in this environment, so even a few naysayers can be useful as sounding boards but don't overdo them!
- Encourage brainstorming on ways to make your business greener. Incentivize the best ideas with awards or accolades.
- Appoint one green evangelist per department or area of your workplace to pass on the committee's ideas, information and decisions and to generally increase support for greening the business.
- Incentives should be related to being on the committee or producing great ideas. If specific eco-actions are singled out, there is a risk of staff grumbling that they do just as good a job using resources/saving waste/biking to work, etc. but feel unrecognized for it.
- Get feedback from staff often about green changes. Listen as avidly to the complaints as the praise; you really want to know what is and isn't working.
- Assign specific greening tasks to teams able to get things done within a set time frame. These teams can be as a reward for other work done, as recognition for current knowledge and a desire to improve and they can be made up across the business or from within a department. The teams can be kept flexible and new ones created for new tasks, so that everyone feels that they have a chance to do something.
- Consider providing a green fund for specific areas to use when implementing their own departmental solutions. However, be sure that the idea benefits the whole company in a way you consider appropriate.
Keep learning
- Understand that becoming a green business is a journey without an end destination. Your business needs to keep learning about new green practices, new green technologies and new ways to save resources and be efficient, so that these can be fed in to ensure continuous improvement. Read widely, talk to others running green businesses and keep looking for opportunities to share your own business's expertise and help others. Indeed, the more your business learns, the more likely it will be that your business becomes a leader in green businesses and can profit from sharing the expertise as well as doing what your business usually does. Create an internal culture that never stops learning and encourages employees to keep giving ideas and implementing things that help your business stay green.
- Stay networked with other green business through online forums, ListServs, emails and websites.
- Keep people updated on your business's experiences through your website and reports.
Video
Tips
- Understand why the business case is stacked in favor of greening your business. Going green will save money for the business. By making changes that take your business beyond mere compliance and into using a more effective and efficient system, then as legislative changes make stricter compliance a necessity, your company will have already fixed the problem and won't have to replace anything or keep updating. Second, consumers are more proactive and green-conscious than ever before. Social media, magazine articles, word-of-mouth and worldwide protests have consumers understanding more and more that green practices are essential for a more sustainable world. Many consumers are actively demanding that companies do their bit to ensure that the environment is protected.
- If your business mails items out, consider switching from polystyrene chips to air-filled bags as cushioning.
- It's probable that you can't move your business into a more eco-efficient building right now. But do find ways to make the existing building more efficient, including asking the landlord to make improvements if possible. Your business might even plan to move to more efficient quarters some time down the track, although it's a good idea to show others how to make improvements in place too.
- You might consider looking into environmental management systems (EMS). Since this article is simply a basic primer to get you thinking, EMSs have not been covered as they're complex and require specialist training. However, following a recognized approach can be a quality assurance for both your business and your clients. ISO 14001 is a good place to start and perhaps check out EMAS. In some cases, you might be able to find an EMS that can be implemented over time, to allow a more gradual and less costly changeover to the new system. Resources can also be saved by integrating with health, safety and quality assurance systems.
Warnings
- Don't get involved in greenwashing. If your business can't do something the greener way, don't cover it up or lie about it. Say that your business is working on changes and expects to have green improvements by X date instead, to show that you're actively working on it but to also acknowledge that your business isn't there yet.
- Green fatigue can set in for either you and your staff and/or for clients. When this happens, take a close look at what is happening and see how you can rejuvenate the motivation and energy that has gone awry.
- Keep checking resources, savings and costs. Rein in any costs that are not warranted or that are harming the company. Sometimes you may just need to wait a little longer before implementing the next step. In other cases, new inefficiencies might come to light and you'll need to address those. And always be sure that there are sufficient resources for proceeding with any green initiatives.
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Sources and Citations
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