There are many whopping advantages to going green — enhanced brand image, increased competitive advantage, leveraged productivity, and trimmed down overheads. Although often, some small business leaders find themselves more in trouble than fun in shifting to the greener side of things. Luckily, you have this handy list to fire up your transition, grow your small business, and get the green rocket started:
1. Check your energy usage.
Start with evaluating your energy consumption as well as the appliances or fixtures that may need to be replaced with a more eco-responsive alternative. LED light bulbs already come in various stylish designs nowadays. They are significantly energy efficient and consume less power by 90% than incandescent bulbs — perfect for your go green advocacy. Additionally, you may opt to use solar lighting and other solar appliances. Not only will they let you save money on your utility bills but also improve your quality of life and lower your carbon footprints.
2. Conserve water.
Water is reusable. You may collect used water or rainwater to economically conserve water in toilet flushes, floor mopping, or watering of your plants. It is important for your business to have water-saving techniques if you want to help in diverting less water from our bays, estuaries, and rivers. In the bigger picture, you are also indirectly participating in the reduction of carbon emissions, and other water and wastewater treatment costs.
3. Go paperless.
There are many ways your business can reduce its usage of paper which can help in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Many businesses encourage their employees to “think before you print”. Not all that needs to be read are worth printing. Lean onto the use of emails and cloud storage where you can equally channel your memo, announcements, and other advisories. Customers’ receipts may be in the form of QR codes and order slips can be made through mobile applications. Paper makes referencing easy but it costs our environment harm if we just dump it after its one-time use so if you must reach out for one, use it wisely and recycle.
4. Pay your bills online.
Billing companies already have a paperless option that allows you to receive your monthly invoices via email instead of physical mail. Such a move allows you to reduce the amount of paper you bring into your establishment and onto the trash bin. This only proves that going digital can also help your business in going green.
5. Switch to eco-friendly packaging.
Packaging may become an issue if a brand’s look is considered at the expense of our landfill space. Excessive use of wraps, plastic, and other packaging materials poses a threat to the environment. Sometimes, a little revisit on our branding strategy is all we need to do to go green. Eco-friendly packaging promises to reduce carbon footprint and utilizes only biodegradable materials. Tap the help of an eco-friendly packaging supplier who can work with your budget so you can kick off your efforts to go green.
6. Encourage the use of reusable bags.
Consumers are smarter and slowly becoming more eco-conscious these days. Some of them may even refuse for you to pack their goods in plastic bags and prefer a more sustainable way. Such is why you should always encourage them to bring reusable bags. One way to do this is via providing them their lifetime bag on their first purchase so they can bring the same bag every time they visit your store.
7. Recycle, recycle, recycle.
Recycling is a perfect way to exhibit social responsibility. You may start by using paper and printing on both sides, reusing old newspapers and boxes, repurposing household items, and others. But you will only be able to scan through the items that you can recycle if the trash bin is organized accordingly to ensure to impose a garbage segmentation policy in your establishment.
8. Practice repurposing and generosity.
Remember that one man’s trash may be another’s treasure so before finalizing your plans of modifying your establishment’s interior, always check if there are items you can repurpose or that can still be functional as hand-me-downs. Restyle, redecorate or better yet, reach out to others who might find them useful.
9. Clean using eco-friendly products.
One of the many disadvantages of store-bought cleaning products is the endless list of harmful chemicals found in one bottle: chlorine, phthalates, nonoxynol, ammonia, etc. On the contrary, green cleaning products are often biodegradable which makes them a dependable and harm-free replacement for such. These products are soluble and can break down on their own to be part of the environment. Rest assured that even if they are washed down the drain, they will not be as harmful as the regular cleaning products.
10. Educate your community.
You may change a few items in the conduct of your business but without properly educating your employees and staff, your green advocacies may have a hard time taking off. Conduct lesson brigades and include how going green and sustainability can help them become even more responsible citizens so they can pass on the message to others and contribute to making a difference. If word of mouth marketing can pave the way to achieve business success, more so it can be for the world.
