Today, small businesses that go green and take action towards reducing energy consumption, waste production, and apply sustainability concepts benefit from a lower cost of day-to-day business. Being green looks great for investors, employees, and consumers alike and can contribute to press and media attention. That sounds great, right? Unfortunately, like most things, going green isn't something you can do over night. It takes time, dedication, and sometimes, a little bit of investment. Hit the jump for some tips to go green with your business.
Print Less
How often does something get printed out only to sit on a desk until it is thrown away? Striving to reduce the amount of printed documents will save a company a lot of money in the long run with printer ink and paper, and reduce a lot of waste. About 35% of a typical company's waste contributes to paper.
Go Paper Free
This isn't as difficult as it sounds, and the benefits can be enormous. Storing documents digitally can save a lot of physical space, and with a good backup solution, you'd be able to archive records, contracts, and other documents. Migrating your current cache of paper documents can be time consuming, but once you go digital finding, editing, and sharing documents will be much more efficient.
Employee Commuting
Offer incentives for your employees to ride public transportation or support car pooling.
Employee Remote Access
Reduce the needed office space by considering offering the ability for employees to work remotely from home. Terminal servers can be set up so the employee logs into your local network and does all of their work onsite while sitting at their own computer.
Energy Conservation
From the lights in the office to your IT hardware to simple best practices like having LCD screens go on standby when not in use, it is always practical to consider energy consumption when purchasing electronic devices.
Packaging
Reduce the amount of materials used in the packaging of your products, or at the very least, use recycled materials. Be sure to indicate when you are using recycled materials, it looks great to consumers.
Virtualize
Reduce the number of servers by virtualizing your servers. This process lets you run multiple servers on a single server, reducing energy needs and can save money on hardware.
Start Your Green Initiative Today
If your business wants to go green, contact us to find out how we can help reduce your footprint and help you waste less by improving your technology infrastructure.
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