Check out these four ways you can improve your sustainability and environmental efforts, thanks to business.gov.au.
Environmental management practices may not only benefit the environment, but also your business’s reputation, sales of your product or services and the business’ ability to attract staff.
There are many small actions which can be taken to reduce environmental impact. Business.gov.au has put together four actions that you can be implemented in 30 minutes or less!
Review suppliers
Conducting a review of suppliers is a great first step to reducing environmental impact. Each supplier can be assessed against these questions:
* What materials does the supplier use? Are they sustainable, renewable or recycled?
* How does the supplier manage their waste?
* Is the supplier transparent about their environmental practices?
* Does the supplier align with our business sustainability goals?
If you don’t know the answer to these questions, set up a time to talk to suppliers about their practices. If they don’t already, the supplier may be open to talking about using environmentally friendly products, materials, practices or services.
Alternatively, you may want to research new suppliers you could use that already have implemented environmentally friendly practices.
Involve your employees
Your environmental efforts will go a long way if everyone is involved, including employees. Spend some time brainstorming ways you could get your employees involved.
Some examples to get you thinking include:
* Start a recycling competition
* Run training on environmental and sustainability practices
* Provide a suggestion box for staff to provide their ideas on what the business could do to improve environmental and sustainability practices, and
* Raise awareness through an email campaign.
There’s plenty of opportunities to involve your employees in ways that suit your business!
Network and collaborate
Networking is a great way to meet and learn from other business owners. A quick search online will show if there are any local environment groups or business meet ups you could attend.
When networking with other businesses you can learn what actions others have taken to reduce their environmental impact. It may even open up opportunities to collaborate and reach new customers.
Ready to take more action?
If you’ve got more than 30 minutes to look into your environmental and sustainability efforts, business.gov.au has more information available on how to manage
* Environmental impact
* Business waste
* Water usage
* Energy use, and
* Sustainability efforts.