Looking for Ways to Help Your Business Go Green?
Everyday energy is wasted while pollutants and trash are accumulating in our environment. Perhaps TecFac’s methods could help your organization—not only to decrease the undesirable environmental impact but to increase productivity while cutting costs — a line that seems almost too good to be true. Here’s 5 ways you can help your business go green:
1. Revisit Your Telecommuting Policy
The technology we sport and support allows our employees and clients to work seamlessly from anywhere, including home. Some of our employees work in Pittsburgh, Tampa, Tulsa, Denver, and Cincinnati while our headquarters is stationed in Rockville, Maryland. Even though the team is distributed, because of our TeamWorkAnyWhere solution, we are as connected as ever with no barriers to collaborating, presenting, screen sharing, Instant messaging, phone calls, and the ability to see each other’s status/presence all on one Unified Communications platform.
Because of these features, our overhead costs are lower, our employees are happier, and the environment is healthier. Our employees rarely have a commute and most of our staff work solely from home. This factor alone helps reduce the consumption of fuel, fuel emissions, commuter stress and time wasted in traffic. Of course, visiting clients and working from our headquarters is necessary and helpful, but as far as our day-to-day rhythms, we have effectively helped minimize the use of fossil fuels and reduced toxins in the air by adopting technology which also allows for a streamlined way to increase effective telecommuting within our company and how we deliver excellent service to our clients.
2. Buy Personalized Mugs for Your Employees
The employees that live near our headquarters commute into the office several times a week. When they are in the office we have found simply using mugs can help reduce waste.
CarryYourCup.org states, “Americans throw away 25 billion Styrofoam coffee cups every year, and 2.5 million plastic beverage bottles every hour.” One way our company has sought to reduce this waste is by getting personalized mugs for each of our employees. Reusing mugs and glasses help keep plastics and other elements in cups from filling up our landfills.
If there is no way around the use of disposable cups—go for paper cups that breakdown easier. If your team uses plastic water bottles, have numerous recycling bins available. One way we have sought to eliminate individual water bottles is by having water delivery in reusable 5-gallon jugs which not only helps save on waste but is convenient by having a hot water spout ready for hot water drinks and a cold-water spout for chilled water. It should be no surprise that CarryYourCup.org has found that, “Bottled water can cost up to 10,000 times as much per gallon as tap water.” So, not only can adopting these tips help the environment, but they can also help decrease your overhead costs.
3. Move Your File Sharing to the Cloud and Leverage Technology
Paper is really a thing of the past. In our company, it is rarely needed. The same is probably true for your business. Things that were once mailed can be emailed and the savings this creates in both postage and paper costs are immense. In addition, going paperless reduces space requirements and rent along with the inherent risk of a filing cabinet where loss, theft, and location could present a problem. The risks and costs of a digital file storage are low and the savings high as far as the time and cost of searching and retrieving needed documents, sharing documents (even sensitive material), and in reducing waste. The less printing and making copies, the more we are helping our planet and continuing to be productive. It is a wonderful thing when the more efficient option for our business is also the option best for the environment.
4. If needed, Buy Office Supplies from a Local Store
Though our company is nearly all digital there are times we occasionally need a few office supplies. Whenever possible, we opt to use a local office supply store rather than have supplies shipped to us. Though shipping may be free, the cost of a truck coming to our office to deliver a couple office supplies doesn’t seem worth it. Stopping by a local supply store after lunch en route to/from work can help save on fuel emissions and shipping boxes as well.
5. Install Motion-Sensing Lights
While this is not a new breakthrough it is beneficial; in addition to decreasing overhead costs, it is also helping to diminish wasted electricity. If people in the office are working, the lights are on, and if not, the lights will be off and will turn on when someone enters the room. These have been very helpful to us as we, of course, use electricity to power our technology. If we don’t have people in the office or everyone is in another room for a meeting, we can do our part to save electricity. And every little bit helps!
If you are wondering how technology can help save our planet and your money – give us a call! We love helping companies find the most effective way to do things and we specialize in things like communication, telecommuting, file storage, and trainings. Reach out to us by visiting our contact page, or by leaving us a question in the comments below!