Helena Ready, Negosentro | Businesses are still reluctant about going green because it doesn’t seem like a sound financial strategy. Can we really work on “greening” our environment while actually saving money? The answer to this question is brief and simple: yes! We present you with top ways your company can save money and be as environmentally-friendly as possible.
Paper isn’t always necessary
Way back in time, when computers were an uncommon sight, using paper was not only understandable, but necessary. Now with computer networks, devices such as tablets and smartphones and, most importantly, the cloud, paper is little more than clutter in most cases. In fact, printing stuff such as schedules, agendas, even business and financial plans is downright irresponsible! Why would your company contribute to extensive rainforest destruction? Just so that your employees and partners can have a physical copy of a document? This doesn’t make sense anymore.
Seeing as how everyone is already connected through their smart devices (which are connected to each other), why would your business waste its own finances and our treasured trees, just for the convenience that isn’t really a convenience anymore. Storing everything on the cloud and allowing for a shared access for your employees saves time, money and plant life.
Recycled packaging is the way to go
The world’s fastest-growing form of packaging is plastic packaging. It is convenient, cheap and quick to produce and serves a multitude of purposes. As we all know in the back of our minds, however, plastic is a huge pollutant, which is why this very word somehow always goes hand-in-hand with the word ‘recycling’. Unfortunately, only 14% of plastic is recycled (again, this is the fastest-growing form of packaging), and it’s the businesses that take a large portion of responsibility for this; it’s your job, as a business owner, to insist on ways to contribute to the reusing/recycling mentality. Provide reusable packaging and ask your customers to return the used packaging for future discounts. The best part: you won’t have to buy new materials, which means saving money.
Go solar
No matter where you live, as long as there’s some sunlight, you can hugely benefit from installing solar panels. First, you should know that this is definitely not a cheap endeavor. On the other hand, it opting for a quality piece of equipment such as SonnenFlat can pay off significantly, even leading to a $0 electricity bill, especially if you’re located in a place that gets a lot of sunlight during the year.
Bottled water isn’t a good solution
Sure, it may be the fact that you’ve been hearing good things about bottled water – it’s cheap and clean, which makes it a valid extra investment. Well, fortunately for your wallet and for our planet (if people start waking up anytime soon), this is simply not a general rule. As a matter of fact, more than 25% of bottled water actually comes from the municipal water supply; meaning that a quarter of all bottled water is essentially tap water; meaning that you, like many others, are actually spending more money so that you can drink tap water from a plastic bottle, instead of a glass or a cup, which definitely doesn’t play well with our environment.
To make things even worse, bottled water plants are actually bound by law to test for bacteria only once per week, while major city tap water is tested as much as 100 times per month! If you want to keep on paying for bottled water and pollute our environment with an ever-increasing number of plastic bottles, you should at least know that you’re not doing anyone any favors.
Going green and saving money can actually go hand-in-hand; in fact, it tends to go hand-in-hand for the most part. By merely pulling back on paper and plastic use, going solar and going back to tap water, you can save money, while helping preserve our environment.
