A Little Growth: Getting Your Business Better at Sustainability in Small Ways

Getting your business better, its sustainability doesn’t have to involve huge budgets or complex reporting. In fact, small and consistent changes can add up to a real competitive advantage, as well as a stronger brand.

Whatever the industry you are in, customers and employees increasingly expect you to show that you care about the environment, not just your profits, so you need to focus on practical everyday actions to reduce waste, cut costs and build long-term trust. Here’s a few things to consider:

Rethink Your Waste Practices

Start by looking at how much your company throws away each week, but also where that waste goes. Partnering with a local skip hire service that recycles your metals, cardboard, and other materials can keep valuable resources out of landfills and can even lower disposal costs over time, and if you then add clearly labeled recycling bins in offices, warehouses and break rooms, this is going to make it easier for employees to build new habits.

Cutting Your Energy Use With Small Swaps

Energy efficiency is one of the simplest ways to become far more sustainable while saving money on your bills. You can swap to LED lighting, install smart thermostats and make sure equipment is switched off after hours to reduce your footprint for a very low cost. There are many programs out there, such as Energy Star for small businesses, that can offer tools and guidance to identify upgrades with the best return on your investment.

Choose Sustainable Suppliers

Your environmental impact is shaped not just by what you do, but by who you buy from, so you can start by asking suppliers about their own sustainability practices, such as reducing packaging, using recycled materials or tracking their emissions.

When you prioritize vendors with clear environmental commitments, this is going to build a more sustainable supply chain and shows stakeholders that your values extend far beyond your four walls!

Going Digital

Going digital should be part of any business’s practice right now anyway, but if you already have paper-heavy processes, swapping to digital systems, such as cloud storage, online invoicing and e-signatures, as well as encouraging paperless receipts where possible, can make a big difference. There’s also other things that can make a huge impact on the quality of your team, for example, video calls for internal check-ins to cut emissions and save time.

Engaging and Educating Your Employees

The fact is, a sustainability plan will only work if people understand it and feel involved. Sharing simple goals, such as reducing office waste by a set percentage or cutting energy use, and then celebrating this progress means that employees can see their efforts truly matter. Offering short training, green challenges and more can help to embed sustainability into your culture rather than it feeling like a one-off campaign.

Start Small and Tell Your Story

You don’t need a full report to make a big difference, because if you have a lot to alter, you can begin with one or two realistic changes and then track their impact over time.

Simple metrics, for example, the miles of travel avoided, can help you see what is working and where to go next, so if you share these small wins in your promotional materials and internally, this is going to strengthen the business’s credibility, but also show that sustainability is a key part of how you do business every single day.