We are in a climate emergency, and every company might be doing more to reduce its negative environmental effects. There are many easy strategies to minimise carbon emissions, therefore there is no excuse for not conducting business sustainably.
Businesses of all sizes can reduce their carbon emissions by taking a variety of actions. This might be anything from starting recycling programmes to actively planting trees. Here are 11 strategies for businesses to cut carbon emissions and protect the environment.
1, Recycle
One simple strategy to lower your company's carbon impact at work is to recycle. Recycling lowers the quantity of raw resources required to produce items from scratch. One single recycled tin can, for instance, might save enough energy to run a computer for a whole hour. Additionally, there is no restriction on how many times tin cans can be recycled. By recycling paper, 17 trees, 7000 gallons of water, 380 gallons of oil, 4000 kWh of energy, and 3 cubic yards of landfill space can all be prevented from being cut down.
A more environmentally friendly company culture might be fostered by implementing recycling collections. This is probably going to appeal to your clientele, and it might even improve employee morale. According to a TopLine Film research from 2019, 24% of office workers stated they would turn down a job at a company with a bad track record of sustainability, while 73% of workers urged their firm to enhance its sustainability efforts.
Confidential paperwork should also be taken into consideration when recycling paper. At Shred Station, we have a "Shred Everything" policy that we both follow and advocate for others. This reduces the risk of a data breach and eliminates the potentially expensive risk of an employee choosing incorrectly which documents need to be destroyed. The provider should, at the at least, be recycling 100% of the paper they shred on your behalf if your firm regularly hires an outside shredding company.
2, Use Recycled Resources
Similar to recycling, adopting repurposed products can assist your company support resource conservation.
Using recycled paper products as an illustration, you may lessen deforestation and protect natural environments. In the past 30 years, there has been a nearly 25% reduction in the global insect population. The degradation of habitats is a major factor in this. With a 50% decrease in butterfly populations since 1976, the butterfly population in the UK is particularly in risk. The entire food chain is impacted when insect populations drop. The number of woodland birds in the UK has decreased by roughly 25% since 1970. On Britain's red list of mammals, hedgehogs are now classified as "Vulnerable to extinction" because of population declines of up to 30% in urban areas and 50% in rural regions since 2000. We can protect the natural habitats of our country's animals and lower our carbon footprint just by using recycled products.
Although recycled materials can occasionally cost a little extra, utilising new products has a considerably higher environmental impact.
3, Use Sustainable Suppliers
Making sure that your company is contributing to environmental protection is no longer sufficient; you also need to hire sustainable suppliers. In theory, you could be contributing to the funding of unsustainable practices if you make every effort to reduce your environmental effect but support companies that take no action or take very little action.
The ISO 14001 certification is one to check for when choosing vendors. This accreditation shows that a company actively works to increase resource efficiency and waste reduction while placing environmental management at the core of its quality management systems. Select suppliers who place their environmental obligations at the centre of their corporate social responsibility initiatives, and if possible, strive to use suppliers who have earned the CarbonNeutral® certification.
4, Switch to Hybrid or Fully Electric Company Cars and Fleet Vehicles
Before the UK bans the sale of new gasoline and diesel vehicles in 2030, it could be a good idea to start considering buying hybrid or electric automobiles for your work cars. Electric vehicles are no longer the stuff of Tesla-sized pipe dreams as automakers are investing heavily in the development of new electric versions. Now that there are many more reasonably priced options, such as the Skoda CITIGOe iV and SEAT e-Mii Electric ($15,000 and $16,000 new, respectively, at the time of writing), businesses of all sizes may more easily afford to purchase electric vehicles. Leases for electric vehicles are, of course, also offered.
A rough estimate of 38 million tonnes of CO2 is produced annually in the UK solely by cars when you take into account the number of vehicles on the road and the average annual mileage! The emissions produced during the mining and refinement of fuel are also not taken into account. We could significantly reduce the country's carbon impact if all businesses and people made the move to electricity.
We at Shred Station are happy to announce that all of our terminals include electric vehicle charging stations. We've got a good start on switching to hybrid or electric models for our company cars thanks to auto charging. Staff members can use chargers as well, which promotes more environmentally friendly driving. Additionally, Volta Trucks and I will shortly begin testing the world's first entirely electric HGV!
5 – Switch to Online Meetings and Online Events
We probably all had some sort of experience with virtual meetings as the majority of the UK's working population made the move to remote working through the national lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. Be it through Facebook Rooms, Teams, Slack, Zoom, or even Teams. Think about hosting the meeting online rather than making extensive trips for business meetings or corporate events. This will decrease the number of pollutants your business produces while also saving your personnel time and money on travel.
About one-fifth of the world's CO2 emissions are related to transportation. Consequently, there is definitely a possibility for significant reductions in our overall CO2 emissions if everyone travelled a little less.
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