Earth Day is an annual celebration that takes place on the 22nd of April and is a great opportunity to make a positive impact on the environment by adopting sustainable practices at home and within in your business.
Along with investing in our planet, adopting sustainable practices can actually save small businesses money in the long run through methods such as energy saving, utilising new technologies to reduce paper waste can all lead to lower operating costs over time.
What small changes can small business make to honour our earth?
- REVIEW PAPER USAGE
Reduce the number of documents that are printed in hard copy and encourage a paperless office. Paperless documents, invoices, contracts and are one way to avoid printing dozens of sheets. As well as being convenient, documents can be edited, sent and received electronically or online, and saved to the cloud or hard drive so they can’t go missing and are safely delivered to your clients.
Offices can also feature document scanners and shredders to encourage using less paper. Using paper made from recycled materials and printing on both sides of a sheet of paper is another easy way to reduce usage.
- RETHINK YOUR WASTE
Rather than various rubbish bins scattered throughout the office in the name of convenience, by creating centralised waste stations with individual spaces for garbage, recycling, and green waste.
Encouraging employees to walk their trash to a bin helps them consider the amount of waste they generate — and with fewer bins to manage, your office can ensure all waste winds up in the proper place.
- MOVE TO E-SIGNATURES
E-signatures are secure and convenient, plus they’ll save you paper, postage, and time with systems like DocuSign.
- CONSERVE ENERGY
Instal energy efficient lighting and turn off lights when not in use. Also ensure all computers are turned off at the end of the day, not just left to sleep which will still use up energy.
- BIODEGRADABLE COFFEE PODS
Stock your staff kitchen with biodegradable coffee pods rather than the conventional plastic or aluminium pods. Compostable pods can be disposed in your green waste bin, and will take around 90 days to breakdown, rather up to 500 years (like plastic and aluminium) to breakdown in landfill.
For more information and tips on how you or your business can invest in our planet, head to https://www.earthday.org/earth-day-2023/