10 Ways To Reduce Your Business’ Ecological Footprint

Climate issues are very real and more relevant than ever. In companies, it is not always easy to reduce our ecological footprint and if striving for zero waste can be a real challenge, it is essential as an organization to adopt new ecological behaviours.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of small changes that everyone can make in a work environment:

Limit greenhouse gas emissions

1. Teleworking – As a manager, have you ever considered the relevance of your full-time employee’s presence at the office? Could his tasks be performed from home a few days a week? Does he absolutely have to go to his meeting on the other side of town or can he use video conferencing software to limit the many daily trips on the roads?
2. Encourage the use of public transit or carpooling – It is not always possible for everyone to walk or cycle to work. Sometimes hazards do not give us the chance to have decision-making power over our daily means of transportation, but it is important to think about it and evaluate what choices are available to us. Depending on the job, teleworking is unfortunately not an option. However, you could probably encourage your employees to carpool.
3. A fleet of eco-responsible vehicles – Not all companies can afford to buy electric vehicles. If you have a fleet of vehicles, consider investing in devices to optimize their fuel consumption and limit excessive speeds.
4. Strategic business locations – Be close to your customers. In addition to reducing your GHG emissions, you will save transportation time and therefore productivity. In business, it is often said that time is money!

Sensitize its employees to consume responsibly

5. Optimal email management – Contrary to what one might think, email would be as polluting as paper. Data storage requires servers, which need power to operate. It is therefore important to regularly clean up your emails, and keep only important messages, as much as possible.
6. A paperless policy – In the same vein, if a paperless policy could be considered, it is also possible to propose an alternative based on a daily printing quota that the employee will undertake to respect. As a result, impressions will be more reflective and will be limited to what is strictly necessary.
7. Single-use plastics are banned – On the cafeteria or coffee machine side, plastic utensils and cups (which take more than 100 years to break down…) are left aside in favour of durable solutions such as cups, which will be a more economical solution in the long term. Plastic water bottles are also prohibited in the workplace and filtered water points are provided in various parts of the office instead. Employees are encouraged to bring snacks and zero-waste lunches and recycle or even compost what can be recycled.
8. Towards reasonable electricity consumption – A simple and obvious gesture such as walking around the office to turn off the lights at the end of the day is unfortunately often forgotten by employees. Feel free to make reminders to this effect, or make a “office closing check list” if necessary and even why not, adopt a home automation system allowing you to automate your electrical management.

Eco-responsible office furniture

9. Give used office furniture a second life – At Groupe Focus, we have a large inventory of used or high-end liquidation office furniture. Most of our products are in perfect condition and will be able to accompany you for many years to come, and this, for a fraction of the price.

The importance of surrounding yourself with suppliers who share common values

10. It is essential that your suppliers’ management practices are in line with your values. Indeed, the adoption of environmentally oriented values must be reflected in a certain consistency in management, and the choice of your suppliers is one of them. We are talking here about favouring business partners (local, of course) with common interests and a similar socio-environmental responsibility to yours.

The environment is everyone’s business. We must be aware of the impact of our carbon footprint and take action accordingly in order to gradually move towards responsible habits. It is therefore important to raise awareness and educate our entourage by offering them real tools and solutions in terms of eco-management and consumption.

You cannot become a “zero waste” company overnight. That’s impossible. On the other hand, the sum of the small changes in our habits and those of our employees on a daily basis and in our operations are actions that will ultimately make all the difference in the years to come.