Today, we celebrate Earth Day, the perfect time to show support for environmental protection and ultimately love for our beautiful mother planet, Earth. For businesses around the world, this could translate in making their workplace more eco-friendly. Sustainability measures have been in progress for years. However, recent advancements in technology make it even easier and more affordable to go green and reduce your organization’s carbon footprint.
Earth Day, everyday
This year’s theme for Earth Day 2022 is deeply inspiring and a great choice. Because making an investment is something everybody perfectly understands in business.
Invest in our Planet.
You put up the effort, make the investment, and the result will bring a great return. In this case, the return on investment comes twofold.
Reducing your organization’s carbon footprint is not only good for the environment but also for the bottom line. Research from Nielsen shows that consumers are more and more motivated to buy from environmentally-conscious brands. This translates to B2B businesses as well, as 81 percent of global respondents feel strongly that companies should help improve the environment.
Five ways to reduce your carbon footprint
Take advantage of new technology to reduce the carbon footprint of your business, while also boosting your brand reputation and saving on overall costs. Here are some sound strategies to do it.
1. Use SaaS systems to reduce paper waste
Offices once ran on paper, but in the age of software-as-a-service, SaaS, you can cut on paper usage down to nearly zero in every area of your company. Paper waste is an increasing problem, according to The World Counts. US offices alone use 12.1 trillion sheets of paper a year. This paper consumption accounts for 25 percent of landfill waste and 33 percent of municipal waste. Enormous!
Instead of adding to the problem, turn to new and readily available SaaS systems, such as:
- Secure, cloud-based record-keeping: Say goodbye to files or employee records, make it all digital.
- Communication and collaboration platforms: No more messages, memos, notes, bulletin boards etc. Use a team communication and collaboration app like Hubgets to serve as your team’s comms command center and information catch-all.
- Task management: Banish post-it purchase and use instead a task management system that will function as your digital to-do list.
- Online form builders: If you need to collect information from either your team, customers, or clients, online form builders allow you to do that all digitally. Form builders also work to complete surveys.
2. Install smart lighting and technologies
Use smart technology tools to be more eco-friendly with your utilities. For example, switch to energy-efficient light bulbs. Although costlier upfront, these bulbs last longer, reduce energy usage, and thus save you money in the long run. And the lighting tweak they provide will have a positive impact on the overall productivity.
Smart technologies, such as smart lighting, can also save an average office building 18 percent of its annual energy consumption, according to the American Council for Energy-Efficient Economy. Finally, consider installing motion sensor lights to switch off lights in unused rooms.
Another eco-friendly option is to buy smart-plugs. This allows you to program plugs that have lights–or other such small IoT appliances–to turn on and off at certain times. For ease of use, you can even tell your smart assistant to turn off all lights as you leave the office, ensuring that nothing is left on to waste energy all night long.
3. Hold remote meetings to minimize travel
Whether with your team members, clients, or for offsite meetings, travel is costly both in resources for your company and the environment. Use this calculator from Harvard Business Review to get a sense of just how much a meeting costs your business. Now factor in the environmental toll. Transportation is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emission in the commercial and residential sectors, according to the EPA.
Communication and collaboration technology makes it easy and highly efficient for you to conduct a vast part of your meetings remotely and virtually. Here’s how to lead better remote meetings.
4. Invest in power saving hardware and devices
Smart devices and laptops are so advanced that many business owners and entrepreneurs could run an entire business off their phone or tablet. Smaller devices are also more energy-efficient than traditional desktop computer setups. For example, on average, in the same period, a PC desktop uses 200-300W of power, while a laptop uses 45-120W, and a tablet 12W, according to these reports.
While it might not be feasible for your company to be run on smart devices, you can consider upgrading your computers to laptops that draw less power. Amid high inflation and greatly increased energy costs, such an approach could influence your bottom line. For a business with multiple workstations, that energy-saving can make a significant difference for your monthly bills and overall carbon footprint.
5. Put your communication in the Cloud
There are many reasons why businesses should be moving their communications to the Cloud. Cloud-based Unified Communications and Collaboration platforms like Hubgets offer lots of advantages, like:
- increased flexibility
- enhanced productivity
- reduced costs
while limiting the dependence on resource-intensive, hardware-heavy, on-premise services. And this can easily be translated in environmental language. It simply means less used resources and a more efficient use of energy.
As a service provider, you can help businesses streamline this transition. By using the right tools, you can even enable them to improve their collaboration flows and increase their bottom-line productivity.
New technology can help. Use it!
In 2022, there are increasingly more technologies that can help your business go green. And not just for Earth Day, but everyday!
What’s more, sustainable workplaces are no longer an expensive luxury. You can invest in affordable digital tools that help reduce your carbon footprint, even on a budget.
Ultimately, you’ll bring your contribution by reducing your organization’s carbon footprint while making important savings and even getting a boost in brand perception. A win-win for everybody.
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