Sustainability and climate change are ‘hot’ topics right now. Not a day goes by without something in the news about Governments and businesses around the world making the switch to renewable energy. They are all slowly beginning the shift due to increasing pressure from citizens and consumers around the world demanding a positive change.
Being a small business it can feel like it is much harder to kick your sustainability goals when you see all of these big statements from big business every day. Here are my top 5 tips to help you smash your sustainability goals, save some money and help save the environment.
Do Business With Green Business
A great place to start is to do business with other green businesses. Many businesses now will actively promote their actions towards sustainability and climate change and making sure you do more business with green businesses will help the sustainable economy thrive.
Install Solar
If your business uses power and has a roof (or lots of outdoor space) installing solar can be the most powerful way to support your sustainability goals and save money.
Solar works by taking sunshine which in Australia is incredibly abundant, and turns it into clean, green energy for you and your business to use.
When your system is generating power your business and it’s appliance, light etc will use the power first, if there is any excess generated it will be sent back into the grid for others to use and you will be paid a feed in tariff. If your system isn’t generating enough power, you will just buy whatever you need from the grid as you need it.
Given most businesses are quite active during the day and use a lot of their power during the day, installing solar can heavily impact your grid usage and save you and your business a lot of money. Given the savings thanks to your reduced usage and feed in tariff credits, your average system can even pay itself back in 3 years.
Installing commercial solar importantly means that every kilowatt hour of power you use from your own solar system is a clean, green kilowatt of your very own renewable energy.
Use Sustainable Packaging
If your business sells anything in packaging or ships locally, nationally or internationally, think about what you are putting it in.
Plastic bag bans are in place in some form or another in every state except NSW whose ban is going live in mid 2022. For more information check out the bag ban website that has information on every state’s current laws and restrictions.
For everything that isn’t a plastic bag like cardboard boxes, parcels and mailers the three key elements are recyclable, recycled and biodegradable. There are a magnitude of companies offering great sustainable packaging so the options for every business are vast.
Change Energy Retailer
When you buy power from the grid we all buy the same power. You can’t pick and choose if you buy the green power or the coal power but you can choose who to buy it from!
Choosing a green retailer or a green retail plan helps ensure that more and more power that is fed into the grid is green, renewable energy. Plus, in the world of energy retail business customers are a hot property. Don’t be scared to negotiate and ask for a better deal! You are their customer so make them work for it.
Buy Carbon Offsets
If you are keen to see your business have an impact outside of your day to day or, if you are looking to become an accredited carbon neutral business buying carbon offsets are great. When you buy carbon offsets, the business behind them guarantees they will offset a certain amount of carbon with carbon positive activities like forest rejuvenation.
Australian companies like Greenfleet make it very easy to offset carbon and you can buy on a buy as you need basis. They even hold plant days around the country so you can get your hands dirty.
Once you buy offsets, you can promote your good work on all of your social and business media platforms to let all of your customers know about the work you are doing supporting the environment which we all work in.
Making the switch to renewable energy and chasing down your renewable goals isn’t always as hard as it first may seem to be. Use these tips to help reduce your carbon footprint and your businesses net emissions.
Don’t forget, once you start to make the switch, tell the world! More and more customers are researching the companies they do business with to ensure their values align. If you put solar on your roof, put photos on LinkedIn, share your clean energy generation data on your website. If you offset carbon, share your carbon certificates on all of your social media.
