Simple Ways to Turn Your Business Green

People who run their own businesses have a lot of responsibilities to ensure that their company continues to go from strength to strength. As well as attending to staff and profits, it’s also become more common for business owners to be more eco friendly during the working day. Here are some easy ways to run an environmentally friendly business.

Make Simple Changes

Start by replacing conventional light bulbs with energy efficient ones. The energy bulbs are more convenient anyway as they last for ages, so this gives you one less thing to worry about. By ditching the conventional bulbs you will be using around 15% less electricity so your utility bills will be cheaper too.

During colder months, make sure that you turn your thermostat down on the heating system. It’s likely that your staff wear warmer clothes in the winter anyway, and they probably end up opening windows to cool off. It’s far better to turn down the heating and save money as well as reducing your carbon emissions.

Keep up Maintenance

All office machinery will work more efficiently if it’s serviced and maintained regularly. Things like drives, motors, pumps and fans will be cheaper to run if they are working at their optimum capacity. Likewise if there’s a dripping tap in the staff restrooms, then have it checked out. A dripping tap usually only requires a washer to be replaced and this can be done easily saving gallons of water.

If your office equipment and furniture has seen better days, try and consider refurbishing things rather than buying new. There are specialist companies who can restore office furniture cheaply and computer engineering firms who can fix any faults with office technology. This will save your business money on outgoings and will prevent further stuff from ending up in landfill sites.

It may seem obvious, but by keeping windows clean, you will have plenty of natural daylight flooding the workplace and this will reduce the need to have lights switched on. Try and use this light until it begins to get darker outside. Remember to switch lights off before leaving the workplace, and unplug electrical equipment such as computers and photocopiers. If things are left on standby for hours on end, they will consume a lot of power.

Handy Ways To Be Eco-Friendly At Work

Try and reduce the amount of written communication by using sending emails wherever possible which will save on paper consumption help reduce the number of trees being needlessly chopped down. When photocopying, always print on both sides of the paper to half your paper usage.

By installing displacement toilet dams in the reservoirs of your staff toilets you could save a huge amount of water over time. Simply put one or two stone filled containers in the reservoir of each toilet and this will use less water every time the toilet is flushed.

For office stationery, try and find a supplier who is willing to take back packaging to be reused or recycled. This is a simple yet effective way to save money as well as reducing your waste. Some stationery companies actually sell recycles paper and envelopes so this is also a good idea to be more eco friendly.

It’s not expensive to run your business in a green way. A little bit of common sense goes a long way to helping the planet.

About the author:

Mike Sorensen is a structural engineer and master cabinet maker and the author of www.AcousticFields.com/blog audio blog. He provides tips for soundproofing a room using environmentally friendly sound production methods and generally tries to do good by mother Earth.