Six Ways to Reduce Your Company’s Carbon Footprint

In our 21st Century the label of ‘sustainable business’ is very trendy, as is having a green badge on your company’s website, signifying an environmentally conscious company. These are good things and we certainly wouldn’t want to discourage them but more often than not they’re quite empty denotations. Here at Inhabitat we’re keen to inspire corporations to make long term changes to the way they function, without affecting their business practices. In that vein we’ve outlined below 6 simple ways that almost every company can reduce their carbon footprint and truly make their business more sustainable.

Evaluate your current carbon consumption

This can be done in a day either by hiring an expert or getting an emissions conscious office manager to do the review. It’s important to assess where you currently stand in order to know where you can improve on. By benchmarking the present number of greenhouse gases generated you will be able to develop an appropriate strategy to progress with.

Energy Proof Your Office

These don’t have to be expensive upgrades but simple tasks like closing the window, maintaining your office’s central heating system and switching to energy saving light bulbs. Replace your old inefficient incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps to save your company both electricity and money.

Turn off and Unplug

Get the members of your team into the habit of switching everything off. At the end of the day make sure all your office lights, equipment, kettles and microwaves are turned off fully. By this we mean switching off the plug sockets, more often than not electrical equipment siphons power in it’s standby mode so to ensure there is none wasted, switch them off and unplug at the wall. This will not only reduce your energy consumption but also your electricity bills.

Meat Free Monday

This can be really fun and also controversial. It’s difficult to get everybody on board but with some healthy persuasion, the right incentives and good cooking, meat free Monday can not only reduce your emissions, but also perk everyone up at the start of the week.

Encourage Working From Home

This is tough for most bosses who can’t imagine actively encouraging staff not to come into the office, whereas the majority of employees love the idea. Thanks to high-speed broadband, powerful home computers, services like Skype and virtual office software it’s now easier than ever to work from home. Of course, it’s not always suitable, face to face meetings do have to occur but if you give each of your employees one day a month to work remotely the amount of emission saved from less cars on the road is a great way to improve your company’s carbon footprint.

Measure Your Progress

Ensure you’re staying on track and consistently reducing your carbon footprint by measuring your company’s progress. With your benchmark report you took initially, you can create a timetabled strategy of what changes you’re implementing and how much energy you’d expect to save against the amount that is actually being saved. You can then adjust your plan accordingly.

Article by Zac Colbert, a writer covering a myriad of technology subjects, including eco tech 2.0, mobile workforce management solutions and sustainable design. He writes for green blogs, magazines and online journals, focusing on ways to inspire companies to become more sustainable.