11 Ways to Be Environmentally Friendly As a Business

Are you wondering how to be environmentally friendly as a business? We all need to do our bit to tackle climate change, deforestation, and pollution at home, at work, and in our daily lives. Did you know that the average small-medium enterprise sized business (SME) generates around 15 tonnes of C02 per year? And that 76% of businesses are yet to implement a decarbonisation strategy? 

We want to inspire businesses to take steps towards being more environmentally friendly so that we can preserve our planet for future generations. And so, here is a list of 11 easy steps to make your business more eco-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, implement these super simple solutions.

Lighting tips

Maximise natural light in your business premise to reduce energy, and improve health and well-being. Ensure sunlight floods your office space through windows and doors, keeping these areas clear and open. You can also use a bright colour scheme on walls and appliances to reflect light around the space. When natural light isn’t possible, motion-sensitive lights can be used to save energy; these only turn on when needed and turn off automatically.

Let Fresh Air In

Harness the power of nature to cool your business in summer by opening windows and doors rather than using air conditioning.

2. Reduce Digital Impact

Green hosting

The content for your business 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 can hugely reduce your websites impact on climate change. A web developer can also carry out regular website clean-ups to reduce the amount of files, code and plugins you have stored on the server, making your website even more eco-friendly. 

Here at Solve, we offer eco-hosting as standard. Solve’s servers securely host hundreds of websites to reduce our client’s carbon footprint by using 100% renewable energy. We 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 and 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 makes your website more eco-friendly.  

It’s not just the size of the server requests to consider – there are also design factors. 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

Activate 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.

Shut Down Tech At Night

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! In fact, companies who practise energy management (lighting, electronics, and other measures) save around 15% on energy bills per year! This shows that all the little things really do add up.

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. There are an increasing number of energy suppliers available who generate power from sustainable, renewable sources such as solar, wind and hydroelectric power. Some provide a mix of energy sources, and can even 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

It’s not just your energy suppliers to 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. Partnering with other eco-friendly services ensures your whole network is as environmentally friendly as possible.

Our Solve office is based at the renowned Nansledan project on the Duchy of Cornwall land. Nansledan is a highly sustainable community that provides mixed-income housing, workspaces, local shops and community facilities within walkable neighbourhoods. Nansledan has been designed and built using local materials, with edible streets and provides solutions, such as EV charging points installed in homes, for people to live low-carbon lifestyles. 

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 harm to the environment. Our paperless office simply has a desk, chair, and computer; 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 paper towels. At Solve, we also avoid using single-use kitchen rolls and paper towels in the bathrooms. We use bamboo toilet rolls from ‘Who Gives a Crap’ as it’s more sustainable, and we like that the company helps builds sanitation in deprived communities as part of their initiative. 

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 consider dual flush toilets, which 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

Avoid Single Use Plastics

Encourage recycling and reusing. 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 staff teams like we do at Solve. You could encourage employees to use reusable lunch packaging or 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.

Reduce Food Waste

You could also run initiatives internally to reduce food waste, like selling leftover cafeteria food at the end of the day or 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.

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

Encourage your employees to take more eco-friendly transport to work, like cycling, walking or running. In 2019, domestic transportation contributed 125.6 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. Whilst this has dropped to 111.6 mtC02 in 2023 (after emissions plummeted during the pandemic) there is still work to be done. 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 also the Solver’s health.

Reduce unnecessary travel

The pandemic has shown us that many business transactions, meetings, classes and networking events can be held virtually. 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 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. Offset Your Carbon Emissions

Offset your carbon emissions by investing in projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This may include:

– reforestation projects

– investing in renewable energy

– engaging in projects that restore biodiversity

– investing in electric vehicle infrastructure

– supporting recycling and composting programmes

– investing in methane capture projects

– purchasing carbon credits from credible carbon offset programmes

By investing in projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions you can effectively neutralise the carbon footprint associated with your business activities. 

At Solve, we have a 100% renewable office that uses a mixture of strategies to offset our carbon footprint. These include using servers powered by renewable energy, planting trees for every website we build (13063 trees currently!), investing in renewable energy from Octopus Energy, being based in Nansledan which promotes biodiversity, investing in cycle to work schemes and encouraging staff to go plastic-free. 

9. Use Eco-Friendly Cleaning Products

Use eco-friendly cleaning products made from natural, non-toxic ingredients. This prevents the release of harmful chemicals into the environment and creates a healthier workplace for everyone. At Solve, we like to use Method, Ecover & Bio D cleaning products, which are made with bio-based formulas, and natural essential oils to keep our plants healthy.

10. 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 with over 100 plants!  

You could even use 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.

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.

11. Be the Change

Be the change you wish to see in the world. As an eco-friendly business, you could promote horticulture and sustainability by getting involved in tree-planting events or community garden projects. If there aren’t initiatives within your local area, why not create your own? Use your power as a business to drive change and promote green thinking 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 plant a tree for each new client – signifying the beginning of a long and prosperous relationship.

We’re avid supporters of environmental charities like Surfers Against Sewage, and often give memberships to our clients as gifts. Plus, we are proud to be a certified Carbon Neutral Business through Gold Standard certified bodies: Gold Standard / Verified Carbon Standard. 

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. You can begin by exploring the Better Business Act, which will give you steps in the right direction for sustainable and ethical business practices. We urge all businesses to support this act and pledge to do our part to make it a success. If you would like to find out more, please read our ‘Why we support the Better Business Act‘ blog.

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. Making your business more environmentally friendly doesn’t have to be a huge overhaul. It’s as simple as taking small steps in the right direction and being open to a sustainable vision in the next business decisions you make.

Do you have some eco-friendly tips you’d like to share? 

Drop them in the comments below!

FAQ’s

How do I start an eco-friendly life and business?

Start with small but impactful changes. Look at your current way of living and working and note the small changes that you can make immediately. Then, look at your life and business from a wider perspective. Be open-minded and question how you can do things more sustainably going forward. Do your research and implement these wider changes into your life and business overtime. 

What does 100% eco-friendly mean in business?

Being 100% eco-friendly means implementing sustainable practices across all aspects of your operations. This includes using renewable energy sources, sustainable suppliers, eco-friendly packaging, reducing digital impact, recycling, reducing food waste, implementing low-carbon transport schemes and more.

How can I be 100% eco-friendly at work?

It can be difficult to measure whether you are 100% eco-friendly at work, as this relies on you and your organisation working in harmony when it comes to sustainability practices. However, you can begin by making the small changes listed above, followed by wider conversations with your organisation. Your small actions and eco-friendly mindset can create a ripple effect within your workplace.