Over the past decade there has been a huge push from customers in regards to wanting to be more conscious of the environment. Both businesses and customers are becoming more aware of their impact on the world, and are deciding to do more to take action by focusing on reducing emissions and limiting carbon footprints.
Here are some tips to help your business become more environmentally.
Reduce the Amount of Paper Used in Your Workplace
Avoiding the use of paper in your workplace is a great way to start. There are plenty of organisations around the world that have decided to go paperless. Although become paperless is not possible for all industries, but there are certain practices or technology that can be implemented to avoid the need to use paper. It also makes tracking documents and communications much easier and searchable and most importantly requires much less physical storage space.
Benchmark Your Current Gas Emissions
It is a great idea to start benchmarking your current greenhouse gas emissions. You can’t change what you don’t measure. As soon as you are able to understand the GHG footprint of your company, you can begin to take steps to reduce it in a highly effective and strategic way.
Allow More of Your Employees to Work from Home
Working from home has become a hugely popular lifestyle for millions of employees around the world during the covid-19 pandemic. By maintaining and expanding the number of employees working from home, emissions from commutes are greatly reduced. The less cars on the road the less emissions.
Make Everything Digital
It sounds like a simple solution to a complex problem, but make sure you offer everything from documentation to marketing materials in digital format and encourage employees to go digital when possible. That can include providing a QR code at conferences for easy downloads. Going digital saves trees, reduces the load at landfills and makes it easier to keep important documents accessible.
Encourage Your Employees and Customers to Make Environmentally Friendly Purchases
Many car companies are encouraging their employees to go electric when choosing a new car. Many businesses are incentivising employees to buy an electric car by providing them with a monthly voucher covering a portion of their lease or finance payment. Some businesses are encouraging carpooling to and from the office. Some businesses have switched to all LED lighting in their offices and have installed solar panels to offset their energy usage.
Offset Your Shipping
Clarify with your shipping provider, but if you’re using either Australia Post or Sendle, both are actually now carbon neutral.
Both Australian Post and Sendle offset the emissions from every domestic parcel sent, making shipping your deliveries carbon neutral. If you’re using a courier, check to see if they offset their shipping also. If not, switch to someone who does. That’s an easy one you can add to your list of efforts to become a more sustainable retail business.
Undertake an Audit
Breaking down the challenge into its component parts is helpful. Start with an audit and ask yourself resources do you use, and what are your firm’s current consumption and waste management practices? Think emissions and air quality, energy and water use, natural resources and land use. How can those be modified to better meet the changes needed? With an audit in hand, the task becomes more manageable.
Offer Returns for End-Of-Life Products
Does your business sell a product that can be recycled? Lots of materials (such as hard plastics) can be recycled at the end of their lifespan, yet customers generally won’t do this if it’s an unfamiliar process.
If you offer end-of-life returns, you can recycle those products for your customers, lowering your product’s environmental impact. If it’s not a simple step, you can recycle returned products in bulk a few times a year.
If you offer a consumable product, consider switching to eco-friendly packaging that can be easily recycled or composted by your customer or add an option for their packaging to be refilled.