Q. Dear Baird’s CMC,
As a small business owner, I’m aiming to make my company more environmentally responsible. Do you know of any simple steps we could take to go green?
– Environmental Ethics
A. Dear Environmental Ethics,
That’s a great decision! Our resident environmental expert, Aditya Bahadur has some relatively quick and easy ways for your company to be more environmentally responsible. You can go green by doing the following things:
Save energy: Implement an energy-saving policy throughout your organisation. Something as simple as turning off equipment when it’s not being used can reduce the energy used by up to 25 percent. Ensuring that computers are turned off at the end of the day can save an additional 50 percent.
Save water: Put up signs next to all the taps in your organisation, reminding employees not to leave them dripping. One drop wasted per second wastes 10,000 litres per year.
Go paperless: Try and use email as far as possible for work-related communications. Encourage all your employees to read emails onscreen. A mandatory sentence at the end of each company email that reminds the reader to think twice before hitting the print button can help a great deal!
Think about paper: Print double-sided documents when possible. Try and source paper with the maximum recycled content percentage.
Use a fax-modem: Fax-modems make it possible for you to send documents directly to a computer without the need for a printed hard copy.