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There’s more pressure than ever for businesses to reduce their carbon footprint. Whether climate change is at the top of the business agenda, measures to reduce CO2 emissions can significantly cut costs and improve staff, partner and customer relations, making business as well as environmental sense. Document management and imaging company, Version One, has been a green company since 2006. Catherine Murphy, the company’s marketing manager, offers the following tips to help businesses reduce their own CO2 emissions.
Give your company a CO2 health check
It’s important to determine approximately how much CO2 your company emits and in which areas of the business CO2 emissions are the highest. Some businesses bring in a third party to assess this, however, this isn’t essential. Commonsense combined with a decent business-specific carbon calculator (e.g. http://www.climatecare.org/business/business-co2-calculator/) are usually sufficient for CO2 health checks in office-based organisations.
Appoint a green executive
A member of staff needs to be given overall responsibility for the company’s environmental policy. Smaller organisations may decide to provide an existing member of staff with this responsibility, in which case they need to have the time and the desire to take on the role.
Involve staff
The buy-in of all staff needs to be obtained from the outset if measures to reduce carbon emissions are to be successful. Advise all staff of the company’s green plans and request help and suggestions. Ensure staff continue to be involved with the company’s environmental direction by establishing a ‘green committee’ and/or a ‘green ideas box’ which allows staff to put forward their own suggestions for reducing emissions.
Recycle and re-use
Whenever possible, ensure office waste is recycled or re-used, including paper, IT equipment, and office furniture.
Cut-down on paper use
As well as recycling paper, you should implement measures and technologies to cut-down on paper use. Encourage staff to refrain from printing-out emails and invest in document management technology. This technology dramatically cuts-down on paper use as well as the printing and photocopying of paper. With a typical return-on-investment of just six months, document management also makes smart business sense.
Enforce good housekeeping
Ensure staff turn off all electrical equipment when they leave the office, including PCs, phone chargers, photocopiers and lights.
Reduce out-of-office meetings
Where possible, cut-down on car travel by encouraging phone, video and web conferences as opposed to out-of-office meetings.
Promote public transport and car sharing
When staff do have to travel, encourage the use of public transport. A car-sharing pool also reduces the number of car journeys to and from the office.
Look into offsetting schemes
As well as reducing CO2 emissions, look into carbon offsetting schemes, which often have a range of economic and social as well as ecological benefits. Tree planting, investing in ‘green energy’ projects such as wind farms and providing funds for low carbon technologies in the developing world, are some of the offsetting projects available.
Evaluate progress
After 12 months, it’s important to evaluate what impact the various measures have had. Have carbon emissions been reduced? Have staff bought-into the new measures? Have the measures cut costs? Once the results have been evaluated, plan the company’s environmental policy for the next 12 months, setting-out organisation-wide targets.
All types of organisation can take steps to reduce their emissions from ensuring staff turn-off their PCs to encouraging web, video and phone conferences. ‘Going green’ needn’t cost a fortune and in actual fact, environmentally-friendly measures can save money and help win new business whilst improving staff morale.
Version One Ltd is exhibiting at Documation UK at Olympia, London from 17-18 October 2007. For further information visit www.documation-uk.com or www.versionone.co.uk
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