The future is green – and with 73% of millennials preferring to buy from sustainable, eco-friendly businesses and the UK aiming to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, you can’t afford for your business to fall behind. UK businesses are responsible for 18% of the UK’s greenhouse gases alone, so getting to grips with going green is more important than ever.
At Weave, we’re working to become greener by the day. Not only are we a carbon-neutral business, but we also plant two trees for every new customer we work with – so far, we have 639 trees in our forest and have helped to reduce carbon in the atmosphere by 43.91 tonnes!
However, we’re always looking to do better and go even greener. Here are a few ideas if you want to join us and the green business revolution.
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Moving mountains with the flick of a switch
One obvious place to start is how your company is powered – does your energy company run on green energy? If not, it is becoming increasingly easy to find energy suppliers who are using green energy sources such as the sun, wind, and waves.
You can also rethink your energy usage to include more natural light in your office space. Using natural daylight within your business premises can reduce energy (which is a constant concern at the moment) and improve your health and well-being. Exposure to natural light can help your body produce Vitamin D, which helps reduce the risk of heart disease, weight gain, and various cancers; improve your sleeping patterns; help you focus on your work and creativity within the working environment; and even boost our mood and ward off seasonal depression.4
Another way to naturally boost your workplace environment without paying more on your energy bill includes a breeze of fresh air, especially in the summer. Did you know that 20% of the oxygen that you breathe in is used by your brain to function, so increasing the amount of fresh air you breathe in can help boost your brain when thinking, focusing and concentrating?5 Turn off the air con, and open up a window – it’ll also help you hear the ice cream van better too!
Reducing your digital carbon footprint
You may not have given much thought to how your website is hosted, but it is an important consideration for any online business or presence. Your website might be hosted on a sever that is using a lot of energy to run efficiently whilst keeping cool. The more pages and data your website have means your website will require more energy to be used by your customers – more energy used means more money needed to run the server and more resources used. Not good for the planet or your pocket.
Finding a server that is powered by green energy is therefore a must in this day and age. Luckily, Weave Studios offers green hosting as standard, with our clients hosted on 100% renewable energy over a range of affordable packages. Head over to our Web Hosting Services to find out more.
We also can help develop or re-develop your website to clean up any superfluous files, pages, and complexity which can make your website waste energy. Read more about the Website Design Services we can offer.
Other ways to reduce your digital carbon footprint relate to the very pieces of equipment you use in the office every day. Can you find more eco-friendly options for your laptops, monitors, or mobile phones? Can you fix or recycle devices that aren’t working as they should be anymore? Could you replace equipment second-hand that works just as well as brand new, and help combat ‘throw away culture’ with electronic devices?
Sometimes reducing your carbon footprint can also be really simple – for instance, shut down your computers and other appliances at the end of the working day! You might think this goes without saying, but many office workers still keep their computers on overnight to avoid having to start up programmes and tabs from scratch. Needless to say, spending five minutes at the start of the day to open your programmes up again is well worth the energy you save! Every little helps at the end of the day after all!
Going paperless… properly
We’ve all heard about going paperless over the last few years – and it’s never been more important for the environment. The UK alone uses approximately 12.5 million tons of paper every year, which requires about 21,000 square km of trees. This number of trees would cover an area around the size of Wales. What’s worse is that paper still constitutes 20% of all waste in the UK – it’s believed that if recycled just 10% more paper each year, we would be saving around 5 million trees.
Let’s start with how you bill your customers. There really isn’t any need to keep use paper invoices in the twenty-first century – e-bills, PDF invoices, and internet banking are the norm nowadays. If you’ve previously given your customers the option of going paperless, let’s flip this on its head – consider giving your customers an opt-in for paper bills and have paperless billing as standard. You may be surprised how many of your customers don’t notice the change!
Beyond billing, you should also consider how you can avoid using paper and printing as much as possible. Editable PDF forms, online ordering, sharable documents and files, and virtual signatures are just a few ideas to try out. If you have to print something off, try and see what other uses you can have for the paper once it has been used – scrap paper for jotting down notes is one idea!
Walking a mile in your own shoes
Reducing environmental impact of your business starts at home – literally. The way your employees get from home to the workplace can lead to pollution before the first round of tea and coffee – the UK Government found that transport produced 27% of the UK’s total emissions in 2019, of which the majority (91%) came from road transport vehicles.
If possible, encourage your employees to take eco-friendly transport to work, such as walking or cycling, such as through Cycle to Work schemes. Not only will it reduce air pollution, it will also boost your employees health and mental wellbeing through regular exercise – everyone’s a winner!
Staying with the idea of travel, any environmentally aware business will scrutinise any work-based travel. The COVID pandemic really demonstrated how business meetings, networking, and everyday working practices could be held virtually and still have the same results as when we travelled worldwide for meetings and events. Moving forward, it’s become clear that if it can be done virtually you will save time, energy, and money in doing so. You can also rethink how your employees work with this in mind – flexible working could be a good fit for your business, especially as it means less money spent on unnecessary transport and fuel usage. Every business is different when it comes to your requirements, but consider this option if you’re serious about reducing pollution and unnecessary travel around your business.
Growing your green fingers
A really easy way to create a more environmentally friendly workplace is to literally make it greener. House plants have had a boom in popularity recently, and it’s not just the aesthetics of blooming buds and green leaves that have led to their resurgence in people’s homes and offices. Plants can remove airborne chemicals such as benzene, trichloroethylene, and formaldehyde from indoor air. Plants can also replenish indoor air through photosynthesis, which gives a little boost of fresh air in the office. These house plants are not just sitting pretty!
You can take this idea beyond the standard office plant too. Why not try to cultivate a herb garden on a window sill so that your employees can use herbs with their lunch or to flavour their water? Or if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, why not try to grow a company vegetable patch where staff can sow, grow, manage and enjoy the literal fruits of their labours, whilst also getting some fresh air on their break times? In terms of employee satisfaction and environmental responsibility, going green really does pay.
If you’re thinking of taking your business in a new, greener direction based on years of online expertise and beautiful design, Weave Studios is here to help every step of the way.
We offer website, graphic, and branding design, and have worked with many different businesses and organisations to build online awareness and loyalty within your target audience. Modern, user friendly, and beautiful branding is part of our bread and butter – whether it is a branding refresh or completely new venture, we’re here to make your ideas a reality. We’re also a carbon neutral company and we’re only growing greener as we go.
Weave Studios are a friendly, experienced team that can help you realise your website, graphic design, and SEO goals. Our team create clean, modern websites built to industry standards that are fast to load, hosted by Weave Studios, and mobile-friendly. Get in touch with us today!