Making responsible choices includes decisions favorable for the environment. If you have a retail business, you may be thinking how to go green. To do this, you must implement environment friendly standards and practices in your business. Doing this, is not at all hard, once you know where to start. You and your colleagues/employees can reduce the carbon footprint of your business by adhering to some eco-friendly practices such as these:
Start carpooling
Carpooling to work saves a lot of fuel as well as reduce carbon emissions. Your employees could participate in a carpool program and come to office together. If they’re not interested in carpooling, you could suggest that they might ride their bikes to work, and if they live within walking distance, they could walk to work. You could give incentives and reward those who follow eco-friendly practices. You should encourage your team to continue with their green initiatives which will help in reducing the carbon footprint of your business.
Go digital
Help conserve trees by changing over to digital medium rather than printing out reams of paper. Technology today has made it possible to eliminate paper trails and use digital resources instead. In your business, you would have been using printouts of work schedules for your employees.
A lot of paper would be used up, not to mention the cost of the ink. But you can use scheduling apps to schedule employees’ shifts and manage time-off requests. By doing this, you would be one step further to going green.
Add some greenery
You can go green literally by adding plants to your office. There are many plants which help in improving air quality by cleaning the air indoors. The foliage would help to liven up your office space and provide you with clean, fresh air. Your staff would also appreciate this decision, and you would be making more progress in your effort to adopt a green culture.
Minimize energy consumption
Retail stores are brightly lit and welcoming, to attract customers. You can keep doing that but switching to energy efficient fixtures and lightbulbs will minimize your electricity consumption. There are motion sensor lights which can be installed in areas of the store which are not frequently used. These lights will be switched on automatically only when required, thus saving electricity.
Change the cleaning methods
It may not have occurred to you that even the method of cleaning your premises could make a difference. Maybe you are outsourcing the cleaning to a cleaning service and are unaware of the chemicals being used to clean your office.
To reduce your carbon footprint, you can change your cleaning company to a more environmentally friendly one, which uses biodegradable products. If you had allotted the cleaning of your office to your employees by turn, you could help them go green by educating and providing green cleaning solvents. Doing this will reduce yours, your employees’ and your customers’ exposure to harmful chemicals and toxins.
Conserve water
Conserving water is another commendable way to be eco-friendly. Keep a check of leaky faucets, introduce irrigation system for your landscaping, and install toilets which have the choice of low and high volume flushing.
Promote the use of reusable cutlery
If you provide snacks and meals to your employees and have been using disposable paper or plastic plates and cutlery, you can make the switch to reusable cutlery. This will reduce a lot of waste immediately. And by choosing to buy organic snacks and Fair Trade coffee will help your effort to go green considerably.
Start recycling
There is lot of things that can be recycled in a retail store, from paper, soda cans and cardboard boxes from the inventory. You could get in touch with a local recycling company to understand how to get your recycling program going. Start keeping recycling bins in your store to enable your customers to recycle too.
A few simple tweaks are all that is required, to adhere to your effort to reduce the carbon footprint of your retail business. Being an environment friendly store may in fact get you more customers too, as everyone these days want to contribute to eco-friendly methods in whatever way they can.
