Being an entrepreneur gives you the liberty of tweaking a lot of things about the business. You can choose to go green if you wish. It gives you the satisfaction of doing something nice to the environment. At the same time, you can also avail tax breaks if you go green. Additionally, a lot of eco-friendly ideas help save money.
How to go green
- Try to use more of products that reduce your reliance on natural resources. Invest in rainwater tanks, solar heated water systems, solar panels to tap electricity etc. the infrastructure would cost you extra but you can recover the cost when you look at it long term.
- Recycle as much as you can. Before trashing something, see if you can find alternate uses for it. And before buying something, see if you can fashion an existing item to suit your needs. This also helps with better budgeting.
- Rely more on conference calls and Skype conversations than on air travel and road travel. Encourage employees to use the public transport/cycles. If you can arrange and coordinate carpooling, do it.
- Minimize the use of paper wherever you can. Encourage employees to reduce use of physical notepads. The most important point here is to ask people to print on both sides of a paper when printing is inevitable. Make that your default printing style. Recycle scrap sheets into notepads.
- Club shipments (based on geographic locations) when you send them out. And if you can do so, avoid shipments altogether. Use just adequate packaging material. Do not stuff shipments with excess packing peanuts, paper and cushioning objects. When you receive shipments, save packaging material. You can reuse that when it’s your turn to send shipments.
- Turn off equipment when they are not in use. Ask employees to shut down their computers at the end of each day. It’s surprising to note that most employees do not shut down their computers when they leave for the day.
- Reduce fax usage. Emails are just as good and they don’t use paper.
- Fix taps and pipes when they leak. Leaky taps, at home, at work and anywhere at all, cost the environment dearly.
- In the era of online marketing, paper pamphlets are just not as effective as they once were. So, do away with pamphlets. Invest in online marketing strategies. It pays better dividends and you save paper. Plus, videos speak much more than paper pamphlets can.
- Receive all office related bills via email. Unsubscribe from paper bills.
- Use the Cloud. It is a centralized location to store online data. You can access it from anywhere. So, this helps you reduce energy required for data backup.
- Switch to compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs and energy-saving power strip that auto-switches to conserve electricity
- Get rid of disposable cups, bottles. Encourage employees to drink from reusable water bottles or coffee mugs instead of throwaways.
- Bring in more plants, indoor and outdoor, to improve air quality.
