9 Easy Tips to Make Your Business More Eco-Friendly

To better preserve our planet for future generations, we all need to do our bit to tackle issues like climate change, deforestation and pollution.

And with the business sector producing as much as 17% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions, it’s important for all companies to take steps towards being more environmentally friendly too. From supply chain to production, and packaging to raw materials, businesses should ensure everything they do is as efficient, sustainable and green as possible.

And, as well as looking at the fundamentals of a business, there are some simple ways to make day-to-day activities more eco-friendly too. Here are 9 easy ways to make your business more environmentally friendly.

1. Save Energy

Energy use varies dramatically depending on the size and type of your business, but on average, businesses can use between 15,000 and 25,000 kWh of energy a year. To avoid wasting power in your office, there are some super simple solutions you can implement.

Lighting tips

Maximising the natural light in your business premises is a great way to reduce energy, and it can also be better for your health and well-being. Ensure natural light floods your office space through windows and doors, and don’t obstruct light with large pieces of furniture or tech. You can also use a bright colour scheme on walls and appliances to reflect light around the space. For areas where natural light just isn’t possible, motion-sensitive lights are perfect for saving energy as they only turn on when needed and you don’t have to remember to turn them off.

Let fresh air in

And harness the power of nature to cool your business in summer by opening windows and doors rather than putting on the air conditioning.

2. Reduce Digital Impact

Green hosting

All the content of your business’s website is hosted on a server; these servers use a lot of energy to run and keep cool. The amount of files you have stored on the server, as well as the amount of data requests your website makes to the server as a user navigates your site, the more energy your website is using.

Having your website hosted on a server that is powered using green energy and ensuring you or your web developer carries out regular website clean-ups of unnecessary files, code and plugins can be huge ways to reduce the climate impact your website has.

Here at Solve, we offer eco-hosting as standard. Solve’s servers securely host hundreds of websites to keep our client’s carbon footprint down by using 100% renewable energy. Solve also plant hundreds of trees per month to reduce to help offset device energy usage.

With guaranteed faster speeds than your current hosting, changing to Solve’s green hosting is the quickest win to make your online presence more eco-friendly.

Website build

It may be a surprise to learn that how your business’s website is built can greatly impact your environmental footprint. Every time a user makes an action on your website, a request is sent to the server to action this request which uses energy. The more complex your website is and the more weight it carries, even down to hidden backend coding, the bigger this request will need to be, and therefore the more energy is required. Reducing your website weight and the number of calls to the server = make your website more eco-friendly.  

And it’s not just the size of the server requests to consider – there are also design factors. As may be expected, darker colour pixels (depending on the monitor) usually require less energy to illuminate than lighter ones, with black being the lowest energy colour and white being the most energy intensive. This means websites with darker colour schemes can be better for the environment.

Solve prides itself on building eco-friendly websites; we offer custom low-carbon builds for businesses prioritising green credentials. This is a great solution if you are interested in reducing the digital carbon footprint of your website.

Digital Devices

The digital devices you use have a large impact on energy usage. Consider reviewing the devices that you use in your office – from laptops to monitors, TV screens and mobiles – could you pick more eco-friendly choices? While it would do more harm than good to simply go out and buy all new ones (due to the waste you would create from the old ones) – if a computer breaks or needs an upgrade, firstly see if it can be fixed, recycled or sold, then when you are ready to replace it ensure you do your research on the best environmental choice. You could even look into buying second-hand equipment – not only is this better for the environment as it reduces waste, but it can also be a great way to save some money too!

Activate power management systems

First, ensure you’ve activated the power management system on all your computers. This system will put a PC or laptop into reduced-power mode after a period of inactivity, and you can simply touch a key to wake it up again. According to Energy Star, this could save you up to $15 per computer per year. Not to mention it’s better for the environment too.

Shut down tech at night

It’s also good practice to shut down computers and other appliances at the end of the working day. Although this might not massively reduce energy use, it can’t hurt – so if you’re not using it, turn it off and don’t leave your laptop on charge!

3. Choose Green Suppliers and Partners

Green energy suppliers

A relatively easy, eco-friendly choice your business can make is to use a green energy supplier. An increasing number of energy suppliers are available who generate power from sustainable, renewable sources such as solar, wind and hydro. Some provide a mix of energy sources, and some guarantee 100% renewable energy. Most are very cost-effective too. Check out suppliers like Octopus (£50 off if you use our link).

Other eco-friendly companies

And it’s not just your energy suppliers you should consider. Do your homework and try to partner up with other like-minded, eco-conscious companies wherever possible. From sustainable raw materials suppliers to carbon-balanced printers and even eco-friendly office spaces, there are heaps of green partners out there, so you can ensure your whole network is as environmentally friendly as possible.

Our Solve office is also based at the renowned Nansledan project on the Duchy of Cornwall land. Nansledan has been designed to be an exemplary and highly sustainable community by providing mixed-income housing, workspace, local shops and community facilities within walkable neighbourhoods, set in a diverse and active environment for the local community, which greatly enhances local biodiversity. Nansledan has been designed and built, from using local materials to encouraging local food production.

4. Go Paperless

Paperless offices

Traditional offices have paper-based filing systems, which may include filing cabinets, folders, shelves etc, all of which require maintenance, and are resource-intensive. At Solve, we have committed to being a paperless office, meaning less paper and printing and, in turn, less waste and less harm to the environment. Our paperless office simply has a desk, chair, and computer, and all our information is stored in digital form run on renewable energy. 

Paperless billing

There’s no need to send out paper bills and invoices nowadays. E-bills, app notifications and internet banking are commonplace, so get with the 21st century and go paperless. And if you’ve given customers the option of paperless billing in the past and the uptake was low, why not consider an opt-in for paper bills rather than opt-out? You’ll probably find that most customers are quite happy to go digital.

Digital docs

Going paperless can extend further than simply billing, though. To make your business more environmentally friendly, try to avoid using paper and printing as much as possible. Virtual sign-off, fillable PDF forms and online ordering are just some of the other ways you can let go of the letterhead.

Avoid single-use paper

And don’t forget about other paper use too. At Solve, we also avoid using single-use kitchen rolls and paper towels in the bathrooms. And we use bamboo toilet rolls from ‘Who Gives a Crap’ as it’s more sustainable, and the company helps builds sanitation in deprived communities too.

5. Save Water

In the kitchen

Saving water is a significant step towards being a more environmentally friendly business. At Solve, we use a dishwasher in the office kitchen and wash all the day’s dirty dishes together rather than individual office members washing them by hand throughout the day.

In the bathroom

In the bathrooms, you could also look at dual flush toilets, which can use less water and push taps to avoid water wastage.

Collect rainwater

Finally, you could install a water butt outside your business and collect rainwater from quenching the thirst of your office plants and grassy areas – you could even flush your toilets with it!

6. Recycle & Reuse

Waste packaging

Encouraging recycling and reusing is important in any green business. If you’re a retail business, you could sell branded reusable products like shopping bags and coffee cups. And if you’re an office-type business, ensure you have the relevant recycling bins available and promote best eco practices within your staff like we do at Solve. You could encourage employees to use reusable lunch packaging or even provide them with branded, bento-style lunch boxes – great for marketing and the environment! At Solve, we take our own recyclable packaging to our favourite takeaway spot at lunchtime.

Food waste

You could also run initiatives internally to reduce food waste, like selling leftover cafeteria food at the end of the day or even an informal noticeboard for staff to share out short-dated produce and save it from the bin. At Solve, we encourage our team to use OLIO or TooGoodToGo to help minimise food waste in our community.

Community initiatives

Some businesses even organise community-based recycling schemes like acting as a drop-off point for initiatives such as crisp packet recycling.

7. Think About Travel

Encourage Walking & Cycling to Work

To reduce the environmental impact of your business, you can encourage your employees to take more eco-friendly transport to work, like cycling, walking or running. Back in 2017, road transport represented a fifth of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing our reliance on our cars plays an important role in meeting emissions targets. At Solve, we’ve implemented a Cycle to Work scheme, which gives our team discounts on bikes and equipment to drive them away from four wheels and onto two – which has a positive impact on the environment and the Solver’s health as well.

Reduce unnecessary travel

The pandemic has shown us that many business transactions, meetings, classes and networking events can be held virtually. So moving forward, your business could be more environmentally friendly by reducing unnecessary travel as much as possible. We are the kings and queens of virtual here at Solve. In our Environmental Policy, we demonstrate our commitment to limiting corporate travel l wherever we can – if it can be done virtually, we will in order to save emissions. 

If you really do need to travel, try to maximise your trip by combining multiple visits.

8. Create a Green Space

A simple way to create a healthy, more environmentally friendly workplace is to make it greener. A famous study from NASA in the 80s concluded that humble house plants could successfully remove nasty chemicals such as benzene, trichloroethylene and formaldehyde from indoor air. Plants absorb the carbon dioxide we breathe out and release fresh oxygen back into the environment, which can cleanse the air at the same time. At Solve HQ, our office is full of air-cleansing greenery, pumping fresh oxygen into the environment and keeping the air we breathe fresh.  

You could even use your free window sills to grow fresh herbs that can be used by staff at lunchtime. And if you have space on site, you could have a small veggie patch for staff to manage, grow and enjoy delicious communal crudités at break times.

9. Be the Change

As an eco-friendly business, you could promote horticulture and sustainability within your staff and community by getting involved in things like tree-planting events or community gardening projects. And if there aren’t initiatives within your local area, why not organise some? Use your power as a business to drive change and promote your green thinking and values to your following. Share your knowledge and encourage others to get involved.

At Solve, we’re a certified B Corp, meeting the highest standards of social and environmental impact. We’re part of community projects like the St Eval Land Project, which is creating a lush green space for environmental awareness and education in our local area. We’re also steadily growing the Forest of Solve by planting 100 trees every month to offset carbon emissions. We also plant a tree for each new client – signifying the beginning of a long and prosperous relationship, and we’re avid supporters of environmental charities like Surfers Against Sewage. We often give memberships to our clients as gifts.

We are also proud to be a certified Carbon Neutral Business through Gold Standard certified bodies: Gold Standard / Verified Carbon Standard. Our total carbon emission across all 3 Scopes in July 2021 – June 2022 was 20.333 tCO2e, which we have offset. Since October 2019, Solve has offset 500 tCO2e, and in 2022 we offset 202 tCO2e.

Over to You

At Solve, we understand that business has some pretty big carbon footprints to fill, so we take significant steps to make our company as eco-friendly as possible.

The Better Business Act is an important step in the right direction for sustainable and ethical professional practices to drive better business. Encouraging businesses to adopt more sustainable practices can help protect our environment and create a more equitable future for all. We urge all businesses to support this act and pledge to do our part to make it a success by supporting the better business experts where we can. If you would like to find out more, please read our ‘Why we support the Better Business Act‘ blog.

There are so many simple ways businesses can be more environmentally aware and eco-friendly – these are just a mere 9! Every business is unique, and there may be different solutions for you. Take a look at what your business does daily and see what changes you could implement. Base your decisions on the overarching environmentally friendly principles of reusing, recycling, using renewables and being less wasteful.

Got some eco-friendly tips you’d like to share? Drop them in the comments below!