Last week I wrote that I was going to start a series on how you can make your business green. While there are many social and political reasons to turn your business green, I’m going to start with the very basics. I’m going to cover the bigger concepts later in this series.

Today, I’m going to go over the first steps to begin to turn your business green. If you already implement these procedures in your business then you’re already one step ahead of the game. If you haven’t, then this is a good beginning.

1. Recycling

Yes, you have probably been doing this for years in your business already but there are still many businesses that do not have any sort of recycling program. This is the easiest step of all. Wherever there is a trash bin either add a bin for paper, a bin for plastic, and a bin for glass. Some spots might need each separate bin and others might only need the paper bin added. For example, if your business has a cafeteria area it would be wise to add each of the bins. The people in the cafeteria will probably have waste for paper, plastic, and glass. If it’s your own office, you probably only need another bin for paper. If you do have glass or plastic you can always take it to the cafeteria to deposit.

2. Fax machine

This is probably the biggest waster of paper in your company. The simplest solution is to use a web based fax product. For the most part, when you receive faxes it just gets filed some place as a record. You can keep these same records filed away on your computer as well. You can always print it off if you need to. Also, if you have one person who handles all the incoming faxes, they probably know which faxes should be printed off and assigned, most of the other faxes are probably junk. It would be easy for that person to simply delete the fax so it never needs to be printed out. Most software will allow you to send a cover letter and a fax via your computer as well, reducing the need to print out a file and prepare a cover letter to fax regularly.

3. Turn off your equipment

This takes a conscious effort with everyone involved in the company. When they go home at night or the weekend, if they turn off their computers and copy machines it can easily save 25%-50% of energy per day.

4. Make sure your faucets don’t drip

Even when turned off, some faucets still drip. Inspect any and all faucets you have in your bathrooms and cafeteria area. Make sure that when they are off, they do not drip. A faucet that drips once a second will waste over 2639 gallons per year.

5. Office furniture

Before you go out and buy some new office furniture, look into getting your old furniture refurbished (or buy refurbished office equipment). It’s less expensive than buying brand new and will help the environment.

The next posting will go into more ways to turn your business green that will require more involvement from a management perspective, the stratigies involved, and solutions to become a green business.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Green Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.