6 tips for making your company green
1. Don’t waste your energy: undertake an audit of your organisation’s energy efficiencies. Reducing electricity, paper or ink can save money in a re
cession and beyond
2. Harness customer concerns: Consumers and businesses are asking questions about the environmental impact of what they’re buying. Use this financial imperative to win business and tackle ‘climate cynics’ at work
3. Break down barriers to change: evidence suggests many individuals are personally committed to tackling climate change. Harness this energy to drive change in your organisation
4. Switch on to switching off: adopt meaningful measures so that staff and colleagues are encouraged to ‘go green’. You could, for example, enforce a ‘PC switch off’ rule at work to save energy and money
5. Don’t go it alone: 1 in 3 managers are ‘Business Greens’ – champions of environmental management. Don’t feel you have to do it all alone, but turn to networks of experts for support
6. Celebrate success: With environmental cynicism still dominating some individuals’ thoughts, celebrating a reduced carbon footprint will demonstrate the importance your organisation attaches to the issue.
Visit Go Green for more resources to help you and your business become lean and green.
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Comments
I'm interested in point #5. It mentions 'networks of experts'. Where exactly are these and how do we find them?
Those tips are all a bit fluffy really. Not much meat there for companies to actually use I'm afraid. I mean the 'turning PC's off' policy. Presumably that's at night but then what else are you going to do with them? Surely that kind of thing's the norm now??
If it were the norm it wouldn't need to be said! How many buildings do you go past that still have lights blazing away all night - when they aren't working! And public sector buildings are still prime candidates for this sort of thing.
Still, it is often the small things that can make a big difference. Think how much paper you would save if you always printed double sided - or not at all!
Factor Four is an outstanding book on how you can increase profitability at the same time as becoming much greener.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Factor-Four-Doubling-Halving-Resource/dp/1853834068
Well worth a read.
I'd recommend getting an external auditor to come in to analyse your 'greeness' because even for a large company - organising an internal audit yourself is extremely complicated for the first time.