Thinking of making your business green?
Are you interested in having a green business? We all like to do our bit for the environment, but businesses are oftentimes guilty of not making eco-friendly decisions. With the advent of new technologies, however, there have never been more ways to build up your green business.
Of course one obvious way to go green using technology is to invest in solar panels and other forms of renewable sources of energy. But this is something that may only be possible for larger businesses—those with the space and capital to put money into large projects on their premises. Thankfully however, there are still plenty of ways that smaller businesses can utilize different forms of technology to be more eco-friendly.
Becoming a business powered by renewable sources or utilizing green technology can be both a fantastic way to save money and a good thing to do for the environment. Here are four ways you can use technology to create a green business.
1. Cloud Document Storage
Does your business still rely on physical paper for documents? This can be a bad idea because it takes up valuable space in your office, but also because relying on paper copies is bad for the environment. Aside from the sheer amount of paper you use every year, it’s also very environmentally-unfriendly when these documents have to be disposed of or shredded.
Images Online is one company at the forefront of document storage technology. It’s now possible to have all of your major paper documentation scanned and uploaded to cloud storage so that you can get rid of your paper versions and free up that space in your workplace.
2. Green Web Hosting
Sometimes it’s the things that you never think about that can actually be making a big difference to your green business. For example, you might take care of all of the usual green activities in the office, such as energy efficient appliances and recycling schemes, but never consider what’s going on away from your business.
For example, if you have a website it will likely be hosted by a company using servers. You might not realize that you can be making an environmentally-friendly choice by opting for a green web hosting company instead of others that are not environmentally conscious.
3. Pay Attention to Lighting
Did you know that lighting accounts for around an average of 20 percent of the energy consumption of a business? So it really is a big deal when it comes to eco-friendly practice, and it’s something that you need to look at seriously.
First, it’s a good idea anyway to implement a company-wide scheme to ensure that lights are turned off when they are not in use. But it’s also worth pointing out technological advances that have been made in energy efficient light bulbs. It’s a great idea to invest in modern LED bulbs and move away from the date and inefficient bulbs. This can help to cut energy usages while obviously reducing your energy costs at the same time. It’s often the case that going green be a financial benefit to your business as well.
4. Buy Energy From Renewable Suppliers
Of course there is no doubt that one of the most important changes that you can make in terms of creating an eco-friendly business is from where you acquire energy. You may currently be supplied by one of the major utility firms and may not have considered switching, but doing so can make a huge difference to the ecological credentials of your company.
There are many different green energy suppliers that exclusively supply the grid with energy from renewable sources. Look into the options available—you are likely to find that your energy could be bought from one of these suppliers with very little financial impact on your business. In fact in some cases, these energy providers are even cheaper than traditional suppliers.
