Business Sustainability Strategies

While many present-day businesses want to focus on the triple bottom line (people, planet, and profit), not all business owners know where to start. If this sounds like you, we’re happy to tell you that there are many business sustainability strategies that you can tap into regardless of the size of your business. This article highlights a range of different strategies for you to consider as you work on developing your business sustainability plan.

8 Business Sustainability Strategies

Review Your Resource Usage

To begin your journey, it would be a wise idea to conduct an internal audit of your current resource. This can focus on a wide range of areas including electricity use, water use and waste production and will give you an idea of which areas may need higher levels of focus. You can find many audit guides online to assist you with this process.

Invest In Eco-friendly Tech

If you find that you have high levels of water and electricity waste in your business, this can easily be minimised through investment into sustainable utilities and technologies such as lights and faucets that are timed or work based on sensor detection, and energy/water efficient appliances. There can also be a general switch to energy-saving (LED) lightbulbs in your officer spaces.

Go Paperless

While many businesses have evolved from paper usage, it is recognised that some businesses are still paper-dependent. If your business falls into this category, it is a good idea to declutter your offices by investing in technical solutions for information storage and financial processes such as accounting, billing and invoicing. For example, businesses can opt to have emailed receipts instead of using printed versions. This benefits the merchant (reduced cost), the environment (less waste), and the customer (added convenience).

Ditch the Plastic

Instead of filling your office lunch or break room with single-use plastic items such as water bottles, cutlery, plates, and coffee pods, you can consider opting for more sustainable alternatives. These can range from reusable plates and cutlery to water refill stations and/or drinks in glass bottles or aluminium cans as these items are infinitely recyclable.

Recycle!

After taking the time to minimise your use of single-use items, you will realise that there are some cases where such materials cannot be avoided. This issue can easily be solved by creating a recycling plan for your business. You can choose to have collection points for a wide range of materials that you use in your business such as paper, plastics, metals, and glass. Where possible these collection points should be placed in convenient locations such as in the lunchroom and alongside general office bins.

Limit Over-Production

Many businesses face the issue of overproduction wherein there is the excessive sourcing of raw materials or the creation of products that may never be sold. This is often caused due to a company’s lack of awareness around how much it needs within a certain period or may be caused due to panic buying that is prompted by a lack of trust in the supplier’s ability to meet any unexpected cases of high demand. Unfortunately, this often leads to increased waste generation as unused raw materials are eventually rendered unusable. However, this can be avoided by paying increased attention to current business analytics and demand forecasting, which will allow for more informed procurement decisions to be made.

Focus On Ethical Procurement

Every business has its business models and practices, and as such, it is a good idea to understand how your business partners and suppliers engage in business to avoid the risk of being associated with businesses that have poor working practices in place. This can be solved by looking at how your suppliers and partners extract or produce raw materials, and by taking note of if they have ethical labour and trade practices. Doing this will also ensure that you can avoid any reputational damage that may be difficult to reverse.

Optimise Your Logistics

When trying to improve sustainability, a good area to look at is your logistics, that is, the movement of supplies and products to and from different locations. Considering that most transportation options are powered by fossil fuels, the most effective way to minimise emissions would be by ensuring that the most efficient routes are used to receive items and deliver products. While route planning would be difficult to control in the case of international shipments, one can aim to have shipments and containers strategically packed to allow for more space to be available for other items to be delivered at the same time.

As you can see from the list above, there is a wide range of steps that you can start taking towards creating business startegies, regardless of if you are a large corporate firm or a small-medium sized enterprise.