Going green seems like a hot trend for businesses. But it’s so much more than that. When you stop and think about the realities of how our every day lives are impacting the planet it’s more than a little unnerving.
The computer you’re sitting at, your morning coffee, the car you drove to work in, the chair you sit on, the mail you dropped off, the clothes you’re wearing each and every one of these things will impact the planet. It may be the raw materials, the manufacturing, the packaging, or even the disposal, but just sitting there, you’re killing the world. Ok, maybe that’s a little dramatic, but civilization is doing more than its fair share of harm.
As a business, it may seem like your only concern is the bottom line, but as a responsible human being, sparing the environment should make it somewhere on your list. The fact is there are dozens of little choices we can make that will help us take steps, baby steps perhaps but steps just the same toward healing the world.
Are you on the right road to a greener business?
Use Recycled Products
Every office can do their little part simply by using recycled products. It’s easy enough to find recycled paper for printing and marketing materials. But almost everything around you in an office can have some recycled element to it. Ink cartridges are one great example of a place where recycling is clutch. Empty ink and toner cartridges are taking up tons of landfill space and will not bio-degrade for hundreds of years. Recycling your ink cartridges and buying recycled ink can help reduce waste and the raw materials needed to create new products.
The equipment we use every day can also come from recycled materials. Office furniture is actually one surprising but really effective way to go greener. The textile industry is a major contributor to manufacturing pollution. The means that cloth, used in everything from our clothes to our office chairs is helping to contaminate the air, land and water. To cut down on the creation of new soft materials a business can utilize recycled or re-furbished office furniture and supplies.
Greener Shipping Methods
At some point or another, particularly companies who deal in products can utilize greener shipping methods. The fact is the transport industry makes up about 5% of our worldwide carbon emissions every year. That includes road trucking as well as air, sea and rail transport. We need transport of all kinds from heavy haul to household goods. Trucks, planes, trains and ships are essential to products around the world. But we can do our part to utilize companies that are at least addressing the issues raised by the shipping industry.
Many shipping companies are utilizing a number of practical initiatives to affect their carbon footprint. Programs like voluntary carbon offsets, reducing empty truck space, recycled shipping materials and improve aerodynamics and tire inflation may all seem like small efforts to affect a much larger problem, and they are to an extent. But any improvement is some improvement. Most shipping companies are proactively promoting their green programs and so it doesn’t take much to do a little research, and find the most earth-friendly program that fits your needs. Utilizing companies that are attempting to increase efficiency and reduce fuel consumption is one simple measure any business can take to implement greener practices.
Curb Your Electronics
We are a society that consumes power at an almost alarming rate. In fact aside form metal mining, the electric utilities industry is the largest creator of production related waste. Every step of our electronics obsession is environmentally costly, from our computers, and cell to the many institutions generating, transmitting and distributing our power. The creation and operation of our electronics is a major source of waste and so every step we can take to reduce this consumption is vital.
As a business, there are little things you can do. It may not be the most convenient thing in the world, but the more electronics you can unplug at night the better. Whether it is computers, cell phone chargers or coffee pots, if you don’t need it, pull it out of the wall. If you buy your own light bulbs, spring for energy efficient ones, not because you are paying the power bill, most likely that’s your landlord’s job.
But because it is better for the planet and its something you can control. Beyond that as an employer you can encourage employees to help the cause by offering electronics recycling programs. Leave drop boxes at the office for ink cartridges, cell phones, batteries, cameras, computer peripherals and other electronic items that can be recycled but all too often wind up going in the garbage.
Jade writes most often for Uship, a shipping market place where people can find freight loads easily. Jade has been writing and blogging for many years and is passionate about finding little ways we can each do our part to save the world.
Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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I’ve done a lot of research into recycling recently (specifically electronic recycling) and there is so much more we should be doing to try and combat the effects of our waste products. Thanks for your writing Jade. Let’s just hope the world can change before it’s too late…
Everyone is looking forwards on being Green and helping our mother Earth! Those ways are easy yet most of the time those are taken for granted! If only all of us will do our part,we’ll surely have a cleaner air to breath and healthy life!
Recycling should really be done now, not later, not tomorrow but NOW. We really need to do everything we can to save the environment before it’s too late.
Great article jade let more businesses in the UK take up the Green challenge and help save our crumbing environment.
here here Mike. The more of these innovative green challenges the better :-)