5 ways your company can reduce its carbon footprint

1. Attend cyber meetings

Small businesses should hold conference calls instead of travelling to a meeting. Use Skype if you have no conference facility – it’s simple to use and many companies will already have a Skype account.

2. Car sharers have more fun

If travelling to a meeting is essential, try to hold all meetings in similar locations within one day, to reduce the overall amount of travel needed. Car share as much as possible, everyone likes a bit of company on those long winded journeys so everyone’s a winner.

3. Think before your print

Encourage staff to ‘think before they print’. Adding it to your email signature can be a handy reminder. E-signing software allows you to email proposals, invoices and contracts to clients so that they can virtually and securely sign them, which vastly reduces the need for printed contracts.

4. Be bright, turn off the light

Ensure all staff turn off electrical devices when they leave. Monitors must be set to energy saving mode so that they automatically switch off when unused. Try motion detecting lights in corridors and rooms that are used intermittently throughout the day.

5. Remember the 3 R’s- Reuse Reduce Recycle

Put paper recycling bins next to every printer, shredder and photocopying machine. Ensure that all communal areas have separate bins for each recyclable material. You could hold a competition where the department that recycles the most waste gets an award for being the ‘greenest’.