The primary conflict in any business endeavor is to make as much money as possible, and part of the process is minimizing your overhead expenses. There are myriad ways to cut costs here and there, and that goes a long way toward improving your profit margin. However, there is potentially much more to gain when your cost cutting measures are also eco friendly. Green initiatives will not only help you save money, but also net you some much needed positive PR. Here’s what you need to know about minimizing your expenses and maximizing your credibility by going green.
Switching To Solar Energy
It’s no surprise at this point that carbon emissions are the primary driving force in the global warming crisis, and the main contributing factor to those carbon emissions is the combustion of fossil fuels like coal and gasoline. For that reason, switching to solar energy can be an effective method of reducing your carbon footprint and, therefore, your company’s detrimental impact on the environment. Solar panels aren’t as efficient as fossil fuels, and they only generate power during the day, but they make up for these downfalls when it comes to cost. Solar energy is the most affordable type of energy, even beating out the more established and efficient standard model of electrical generation. Wind turbines are also more efficient than solar panels, but they are much more costly, and they take up an immense amount of space, making their use case rather small. In order to take full advantage of solar power, you’ll need to invest in a solar battery or two, because this will allow you to store excess energy for use during the evening or at night. This can also protect you in the event of a power outage, making it even more valuable, because it can prevent your business from losing time and money during an outage.
Going Paperless
The paperless business model has long been a great marriage between the positive PR of eco friendly practices and cost cutting measures. Printing has a number of costs associated with it. Printers themselves can be quite costly, although this is typically an infrequent expense. However, printers will also need to be maintained, and printing requires paper, ink, and toner, each of which represents a smaller, but much more frequent repeat cost. Ditching printing entirely is not only possible, but there are practically no downsides. You’ll save money around every corner by switching to the digital distribution of documents, for starters. Moreover, modern consumers prefer digital solutions to documentation problems, simply because they are far less cumbersome. Receiving text messages and emails take up no physical space and are available on any device, including the smartphone that the average person carries on his or her person at all times. Likewise, sending your employees emails instead of printed memos will be in everyone’s best interests, and physical data storage is being phased out because of its inability to accommodate the massive influx of data in the digital age. Cloud computing can neatly address interoffice communication and data storage all in one by allowing your staff to communicate directly without the need for either printing or email, and cloud storage is quickly becoming the default method of storing data because of its additional security and efficiency.
Switching To Reusable Shopping Bags
Retailers of all kinds depend heavily on the use of disposable, plastic bags to keep things running smoothly, but this represents both an ecological disaster in the form of countless plastic waste and a small, yet nonetheless constant repeat cost for businesses. Plastic waste is by far the most detrimental form of waste, because plastic isn’t biodegradable and takes up to 1,000 years to dissolve. Therefore, it can be extremely distressing to see plastic products that are designed to be waste used for a number of applications. Instead of offering your customers disposable plastic bags at checkout, you can switch to the model of offering only reusable bags that customers will need to pay for. While this won’t necessarily be a universally beloved measure, it will very quickly generate a customer base that is equipped for this measure by virtue of having purchased at least one reusable bag, and often more than one. This means that you will make a profit instead of hemorrhaging money little by little, and your customers will stop being encouraged to waste plastic as a rule without even thinking about it.
Running a business will always be a challenge, but a successful business is one that has leadership that will find creative solutions to age old problems in order to keep things running smoothly. These green initiatives have gained steam simply because they offer businesses the ability to make a morally good and publicly well received decisions and come out on top.
