Although there were terrible stories of people losing jobs and companies closing during lockdown, there were also over 400,000 NEW businesses launched during the pandemic in the UK alone!

Enterprising people set up home cooked food delivery businesses, they made and sold candles, jewellery, sent out healthy snacks to people working at home and organised online sewing classes.

Launching a new business is exciting and rewarding, and you can make it even more so if you choose to make your business more green, You’re on a steep learning curve anyway, so why not get off on the right footing? Making your business more sustainable involves many aspects, so they key is to start small. Just pick one thing to commit to and when that’s in place, look at what else you could consider.

Here are some ideas.

Use More Natural Light

The big push towards greener business isn’t just about looking good in front of your customers or saving yourself money (although it will bring you these things); the main reason for going green and becoming more eco-friendly is to protect the planet so that life can flourish. With this in mind, why not use the planet’s natural resources to help you in this endeavour? In particular, why not use natural light?

Natural light is much better for the body and mind than any kind of artificial light could be, so using as much of it in your business premises as you can will improve productivity and make your staff – and customers – feel happier. On top of this, it will mean you use less electricity so your bills will be lower and your energy usage will decrease, making you greener.

Go Paperless

A paperless office is a green office. Keep this mantra in mind and try to turn your business into a paperless one where possible. It can be hard to do this at first, especially when you are so used to printing off anything you might need. However, technology means that, in reality, nothing needs to be printed at all – you can simply store everything in the cloud, freeing up space in your office and using less paper. The documents will be easy to access when needed, and you might even be able to move to a smaller office or work remotely because you need less space, saving you even more money (and reducing your carbon footprint as you won’t be commuting any more if you take the latter option).

Contact your bank and request paperless statements and request your suppliers to only email their invoices instead of posting them. If you do need to use paper, make sure it’s recycled so that you close the loop.

Get Electric Vehicles

If you have a fleet of vehicles, changing them all at once to electric cars would be a considerable expense, and it may be impossible. However, when you do need to replace a vehicle, consider getting an electric one. Since you were going to buy a new car anyway, this will be less of a chore; especially as there are plans worldwide for us to switch to electric transport and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.

When it comes to lorries, electric engines aren’t quite there yet, but you can certainly ensure that your drivers are being as fuel-efficient as possible by checking the data from your OPTAC3 tachograph.