Making changes to increase how sustainable your business is or reduce your environmental impact can help you not only reduce waste and your carbon footprint but also appeal to a large section of consumers who want to buy from and partner with businesses who have sustainability practices they follow to make them more eco friendly.
Sustainability is not a buzzword. It’s a growing sector; multiple studies and surveys have found that overwhelmingly, people want brands to be more conscious of their impact and put methods in place to reduce their carbon footprint; in fact, 90% of Gen X would pay an extra 10% more for products or services that are more eco friendly while The Business of Sustainability found that 78% of consumers want to buy from brands that are sustainable but don’t know how to find them or identify how they are making the required changes.
Sustainability for businesses means you need to make ongoing and constant changes that become part of your policy and ethos. Read on for tips on how to implement sustainability into your operations.
Identify All Areas You Can Change
Before you start making changes, you need to first identify all areas that you make swaps in and what the impact on your organization will be. It could be something as simple as swapping to a green energy provider to reduce your reliance on traditional electricity sources. Or it could be swapping out plastic wrap for paper or cardboard alternatives. Sit down, go through your business with a fine toothcomb, and identify what you can change.
Do Your Research
Research the different types of resources available to businesses such as yours to allow you to make eco-friendly changes. Find recommended suppliers, check out their eco credentials, and ensure their values align with yours and that you are confident you are making the right decision. Ask questions and delve into the vendors you will be working with or want to work with. Let’s say you want to reduce your energy consumption and are looking at using energy management software. You need to know the questions to ask your energy management software provider so the software allows you to do everything you need and gives you the expected results.
Make A Timeline
It will be virtually impossible to make all of the changes at once and go from being unsustainable to fully sustainable in a matter of days or weeks. Changes like this need to take time to make sure they’re feasible. So set a timeline that you can stick to and put new changes in place by. Factors such as budget, accessibility, supply issues, and availability will all impact the changes you can make and when you can implement them, so take it slow but have definite timelines.
Start Small and Build Up
As mentioned above, you can likely make many changes to increase your eco credentials. However, to make the theme fully sustainable, you need to ensure there are changes that can last the distance, not be a flash in the pan. Start small, make one change at a time, then things will go as you expect, move on to the next change, and so on. Wait until the changes have been fully implemented and integrated and everyone involved with your company is on board and doing what they need to before introducing anything else. This way, you can avoid falling into old habits and undoing all the work you have put in so far.
