Businesses

Reducing the carbon footprint of the business is a sure fire way to save money and it can be good Public Relations too as more and more people begin to choose where they buy from based on the ‘green-factor'.

The size and sector of your businesses will make a difference to what you should do. The following steps can be carried out by all businesses. You can also get a personalised action plan tailored to your business from the Carbon Trust.

Small steps make a big difference:

• Switch off PCs, monitors and other office equipment when not in use. A massive 85 percent of the energy used is when equipment is on standby. Switching off will also help machinery last longer. You can get timers fitted to computers and printers so they shut down each evening. You can even set the timer to boot up for just before your employees get into work so they can start right away.
• Set the thermostat on the water to 60 degrees, (to prevent legionnaires' disease) any higher than this is just wasting electricity and costing money.
• Use less water. Depending on your business this might mean simple steps such as insulating pipes to protect against cold weather-related leaks, installing push taps and low-flush toilets or looking at ways to reuse process water. Business Link provide tips and ideas.
• Ask your energy supplier about green tariffs or consider changing to a supplier that offers one.
• Heating, check heating controls are at the correct setting and room thermostats are set to temperatures consistent with comfort.
• Audit. Do a ‘walk-around' of your business to see where energy could be used more efficiently and where bills could be cut. Ask employees for their ideas, maybe offer a prize for the best.

Advice and assistance

Enworks is the north west's environmental business support service. It helps businesses with there resource efficiency.

The Envirolink Northwest programme supports the development and growth of the low carbon and environmental goods and services sector in the north west of England.

Bigger steps

In your home - bigger changes offers a range of suggestions for individuals, which are equally applicable to businesses, to save money and have a positive impact on the environment. These include the use of alternative materials and information on the main renewable energy technologies that available to generate your owning electricity and heating.

Think local

By choosing products and services that are local to you instead of ones that are from further afield you can help the environment. Plus, you'll be helping support your area and the economy.

Business travel

• Encourage employees to walk if travelling very short distances or to consider using public transport where possible.
• If you are a large organisation consider having a couple of pool cars that can be shared.
• Consider whether meeting in person is always necessary or whether you can make use of technologies such as video conference calling. Relationship building is obviously an important part of business and you might not want to pitch for work in this way but often it can be a good way to reduce employee time out of the business as well as cost and energy used.
• Travel plan information for businesses is available.
• Businesses may want to consider the use of car clubs such as City Car Club.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

Reducing waste in your business will save money and reduce the impact on the environment:

• Encourage staff to use electronic communications where possible and to only print when absolutely necessary.
• Change printer settings to print on both sides of paper.
• If your business uses packaging for products look at how to reduce the quantity of this and make it more environmentally friendly.
• Get over 200 practical tips on how to reduce your waste for free from Envirowise.
• Make it easy for employees to recycle. Place bins for the recycling in easy to access areas and get recycling bins for cartridges and toners. Used cartridges and toners are worth money. There are a number of companies that will pay you for them or you can donate to charity.

This page was last updated on 27 April 2012