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Over the past few years, society has become more and more focused on improving sustainability in our personal lives and the workplace. Many businesses face constant criticisms that they’re not doing enough to pursue sustainability within their business model, and rightly so. Retailers are a common target here as general waste and excessive packaging are key contributors to the enormous landfills that pollute the planet. Office spaces also use a lot of electricity, and many don’t adhere to energy-saving practices. To encourage you to adopt some environmentally friendly practices in your business, we’ve listed four sustainability trends that all businesses should take note of in 2022.
Sharing Data
It’s one thing to tell your customers that you’re practicing sustainability and using eco-friendly products, but it’s another thing to actually show the public that you’re sticking to your word. Today, many employees want the businesses they work for to be more transparent about their sustainability. This includes sharing data on everything from your carbon footprint and data that proves they are doing things to cancel out their negative impact on the environment. For example, they may show that they are planting trees to counteract the carbon emissions of their global deliveries or that their solar panels affixed to their office or shop generate more power than they take from fossil fuel sources.
Sustainable Packaging
While this has been a concern for many years now, excessive use of unsustainable packaging is more criticised than ever today. Plastics have been highlighted as one of the largest pollutants of both our land and sea, with many sea creatures getting sick or dying from plastic consumption. As there are better, sustainable, recycled plastic packaging options available, such as eco-friendly polythene from Polythene UK, all retail businesses should be striving to search for alternative packaging methods for their products. And if purchasing general items and supplies for your office, it’s important to source these from other businesses with a strong focus on sustainability too.
Reducing Waste
As well as using sustainable packaging and materials in your business, it’s just as important to cut down on the general waste of your office and employees. There should be strict encouragement and enforcement of recycling initiatives so that you can be sure you’re cutting waste as much as possible. Food waste can also avoid going to landfills too. Work with eco businesses such as those that convert this waste into biofuel, and also look at sending unwanted items such as old furniture to charity shops if they’re in good condition.
Green Initiatives
Some other great ideas for your business, both from an eco-friendly standpoint and as a positive message to the public, is to adopt green initiatives within your company. This can be anything from running large, dedicated recycling campaigns to changing the way your office functions entirely. Going paperless, utilising an alternative energy supplier, or getting involved in a global initiative like planting trees are great ideas. Switching to remote working could also be a great idea, saving you money, as well as reducing your company’s usage of electricity by removing the need for an office space.
