World Environmental Day - 5th June

Environmental update - 02/06/2011

Managing environmental impacts is something that all businesses should do. Clearly, there will be different impacts in different businesses and sectors, but every business will have some impacts and these will be linked to the business’ bottom line. The environment is heavily regulated and evidencing environmental compliance is becoming crucial in the tendering process.

What can you do?

1. Take a walk around your business and list all of your environmental impacts.

These will typically include the following:

Utilities used (gas, electricity, oil, water)
Raw materials used
Business travel
Paper/stationery usage
Waste generated

2. When you have listed all your impacts, you should try to quantify them so that if they are re-measured in the future they can be compared using the following:

Utilities - kilowatt hours (kWh) used per annum
Raw materials used - tonnage of materials purchased versus tonnage of product sold per annum
Business travel - miles travelled/litres of fuel consumed per annum
Paper/stationery usage - amount of paper used per annum
Waste management - tonnage sent to landfill or recycled (by waste type)

3. Having quantified your impacts, you should look to reduce them. For example:

Utilities - ensure lights, monitors and appliances are switched off at the end of the working day. A monthly audit will help to flag up frequent offenders.
Raw materials used - only order what you need. Are there ways to reduce the amount of packaging or raw materials in your products?
Business travel - can this be avoided by holding video conferencing or audio meetings? Car share and use public transport where possible.
Paper/stationery usage - print smarter by avoiding unnecessary printing, set printers to double-sided as a default and only print in high quality/colour when required.
Waste management - minimise waste by reusing stationery and cups and avoid unwanted junk mail/faxes by registering with the mail/fax preference service. Identify waste that can be recycled and provide labelled bins to encourage segregation.

While these steps are a great start for making your business environmentally sound, why not talk to us about how we can help you achieve environmental certification? We can help your business work towards ISO 14001 which can be crucial when tendering for new business – it could make the difference between winning and losing a big contract.