Looking for ideas for green actions that your company can commit to today? You’ve come to the right place!
Inspired by YouMatter and the World Wildlife Fund, today we bring you ten ideas for how your company can start making a meaningful difference today.
- Work with emissions reporting organisations such as CDP or use online calculators like Climate Care to calculate your average annual carbon footprint. Then set realistic, measurable goals to reduce it using specific strategies. Your target could be to reduce electricity consumption by 2% over the next three years simply by turning off the office lights at night and lowering the heating. Or it could be more ambitious, involving the transition of your entire fleet of company cars to hybrid and electric.
- Research clean energy suppliers such as the Big Clean Switch and discover the cost benefits of using solar, wind, water, and biofuel power. You could go a (large) step further and install your own solar panels to produce energy.
- Reduce waste. Encourage employees to use digital (vs. printed) documents and buy recycled products, e.g., paper. Favour multi-usage items – such as china mugs and cups – over disposable ones. Consider eco-friendly replacements for Sellotape, bubble wrap, plastic packaging, and envelope windows too.
- Make recycling bins easily accessible to promote good recycling habits among employees. Clearly mark where plastics, paper, batteries, and ink cartridges should be disposed of to ensure the right items are put in the right bins.
- Replace old, energy-guzzling equipment – printers, air conditioners, laptops, light bulbs, etc – with new, energy-efficient models.
- Encourage and incentivise staff to take public transport, cycle, or carpool on their daily commute. Favour Zoom meetings over in-person meet-ups that necessitate travel, particularly when large distances are involved. Set a travel time threshold from which it’s acceptable for employees to travel by plane rather than train. If you have a fleet of company cars, make the switch to electric or hybrid vehicles.
- Reduce water usage in your bathrooms with efficient plumbing, low-flow toilets, and motion-activated faucets. Fix leaks promptly, install hand dryers and shift to environmentally-friendly soaps.
- Opt for local suppliers with a proven track record in sustainability. Ethical Consumer Magazine is a good place to check companies’ sustainability credentials. Check your company pension provider’s green credentials, as some invest in fossil fuels, deforestation, weapons, and tobacco.
- Raise awareness among employees and your wider business community of sustainability issues. Share information on social media and your website, and run webinars and campaigns, to support the cause.
- Lobby your local MPs to add their voice to the sustainability cause.
As we have seen, there are a lot of companies that can do to help the world transition to a greener, more sustainable future. Are you ready to add the voice and actions of your business to the increasingly urgent cause?
If your current challenges are recruitment-focused, we can help! With a vast network of constantly-refreshed, active job candidates on our books – many of whom you wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach – we will quickly connect you to talented, best-fit candidates. Moreover, thanks to bulk discounts on job adverts – the benefits of which we are happy to share with you – promoting your vacancies through us is extremely cost-effective. If no candidate is hired, no fees will be charged, so it’s a zero-risk proposition. Please get in touch at info@ablrecruitment.com or on 020 7092 3911 to find out more today.
