More and more organisations are thinking about how they can make their business more sustainable and eco-friendly. The solutions might seem more obvious for certain industries but businesses of all types can take steps to make their operations more environmentally friendly. If you know you want to be more sustainable but need some inspiration, our guide can help you to find useful ideas. Read on for our top suggestions for how to make your business more sustainable:
Cafes, bars & restaurants
Cafes, bars, and restaurants have plenty of options for going eco-friendly. Not only will this reduce your impact on the planet but it’s likely to impress your customers too. For example, recent research has shown that more than four in five people expect hospitality businesses to have some eco-friendly qualities to them. Many businesses can achieve this easily by switching to a smarter option for serving their food and drinks.
Using reusable plates and cutlery in your establishment is the ideal choice for the environment but sometimes you need disposable options, for example for takeaways and outdoor dining. Fortunately, you can ditch the plastic and focus on sustainable solutions. Try stocking biodegradable or compostable take away cutlery and packaging. You can also focus on cardboard, paper, and bamboo instead of plastic options. Also, there are eco-friendly shipper boxes that offer a wide range of benefits to help businesses become more sustainable. They can be custom-made to fit any products a business wishes to ship, resulting in fewer resources wasted on improperly fitting packaging. Additionally, Arka custom shipper boxes are easy to assemble and provide an excellent layer of protection for fragile items with low levels of material consumed. Further, custom shipper boxes can be custom printed with logos, designs and messages that help create brand awareness amongst customers.
You can also take steps to reduce food waste. You might consider donating food to charity or there are apps and other platforms that allow you to sell surplus food that’s still good enough to eat to customers for a reduced price. This reduces how much good food goes to landfills and also increases your exposure.
Garages & mechanics
Garages and mechanics can also do their bit to be more sustainable. Just like in an office environment, choosing energy-saving light bulbs and equipment and appliances that consume lower amounts of energy can make a real difference, especially if your equipment is in regular use. Over time this can add up to a massive reduction in your energy usage.
Air compressors are another handy solution. Compressed air is a valuable power source for millions of people and has a variety of different applications. These include applications within a garage environment such as inflating tires.
You can save on costs and energy and also improve the efficiency of your business by choosing air compressors over more traditional forms of energy. Most air compressors do not use oil in their operation and there are clear environmental benefits to using oil free air compressors as an alternative source of energy instead of oil.
Office-based businesses
If you work in an office there are lots of ways to improve your sustainability credentials. Limiting how much paper you use and digitising your work as much as possible means you consume less energy and generate less waste. Actively encouraging your team to recycle paper in the office means that even when you do need to print something it’s not going into the bin once you’ve finished with it.
You can also make the office environment more sustainable by introducing energy-saving lightbulbs and appliances. Encouraging your team to work remotely or take a hybrid approach to work can also reduce the carbon footprint of your office. When staff do need to get to work, you can also encourage them to use more sustainable modes of transport like walking, cycling, car sharing, or using public transport instead of their vehicles.
