When the entire world is being swept up in the wave of going green, why should your business stay away? Every business, big or small has many benefits to reap from this process.

Reusing and recycling day-to-day products is helping companies all around the world to cut costs and showcase a greener face to their customers.

However, sometimes many obvious reasons become clouded by contradicting business strategies and competition, so let’s talk about a few compelling motivations for you to turn your business green.

Most Customers and Shareholders Want You to

With the increasing awareness about eco-friendly businesses and use of sustainable sources of energy, even your customers and shareholders can demand your company to go green in case they haven’t already done so.

This is now an integral part of Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR, which every company needs to fulfill in order to get certain grants and tax deductions from the government.

While many MNCs (Multi-National Corporations) are directly associating themselves with NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) and welfare organizations to spread awareness about environment and welfare, others are funding projects under separate names for the same ultimate goal.

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How You Can Impress Customers and Shareholders:

• While most customers and shareholders will want to know about the happenings in the company, a newsletter or press release letting them know about the green initiative could be enough to generate customer loyalty for those who are environmentally conscious.
• For those who are more numbers driven, let them know about the tax breaks and how going green can actually improve the bottom line.
• Be careful to not advertise the green initiatives too much as this does look like a ploy to have positive PR.

Reducing Waste Generation From Your Offices

Reusing materials like ink cartridges can have an immense positive impact on the integrated economy of your company.  All the materials used in ink cartridges can be recycled, however sometimes the process may seem a little complex.

In fact you can get in touch with retailers like Costco and Walgreens who do a fine job at refilling cartridges. If you have a big business and require such refills in bulk, you can always sign a contract with them for reducing service charges.

Reusing inkjet cartridges creates less plastic waste. Remember to refill your cartridge till it has reached the end of its lifespan and then recycle it. This will save at least 80 percent more energy than freshly producing the same amount of plastic.

This can be a significant step toward creating a plastic-free planet.

How To Reduce Waste:

• Recycle ink cartridges as this can save money and the environment.
• Start an office health initiative where the stairs are taken instead of the elevator.
• Go paperless where possible because in a digital world, the need for paper is decreasing.

Easy Attainment of ISO Standards

International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has created many prerequisites for attainment of an ISO certificate. A comprehensive series of standards is dedicated toward creating practical tools for better management of environmental responsibilities by these companies.

Going green helps in seeking out a favorable reputation among both the ISO and the consumers.

How To Attain ISO Standards:

• Look up what ISO means if we are being honest.
• Reduce waste where possible without sacrificing safety or quality.
• ISO doesn’t provide certification so looking up a few certification bodies would be ideal.
• Hang the certificate up in a prominent place.

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Better Workplace Hygiene

When you go green, your motto automatically becomes “reduce, reuse and recycle”. With reducing and reusing your company will generate fewer waste products.

These waste products can be anything that is regularly used by your company including plastics, chemical agents, dyes and smoke.

This provides a better working condition for your employees and a stronger output. This will drastically reduce the number of sick days and leaves.

In fact, a company with a cleaner work environment may have to pay less health insurance premiums for employees and require less accident coverage.

Even if you save a few dollars per employee that grand total of savings per year becomes quite an impressive amount.

So improving workplace conditions by going green is a wonderful and cost effective way of increasing company turnover. Employees in the office can appreciate the effort it takes to make the workplace more eco-friendly.

How To Eliminate Waste Without Sacrificing Hygiene:

• Encourage employees to bring in a reusable container for lunch. This can also eliminate the horrors that come with a shared office fridge as people are more likely to take these containers home.
• Start health initiatives like quitting smoking or eating healthy.
• Send out tips to staff on how to eliminate waste.
• Encourage carpooling to lunch or to work.

Smart Cost Cutting Is Never Bad for Any Business

Big names like Wal-Mart and DuPont have set examples in the recent past that cost cutting around the ages by using sustainable and environment friendly methods can be extremely rewarding.

DuPont, the well known chemical maker, went from America’s worst polluter to a sustainable business. This move saved them about 3 billion USD.

Whereas some companies are interested to open trade with other companies in what they are calling “cap and trade”.

According to this concept, big companies that cut down carbon emissions can sell their leftover pollution credits to other companies who will have trouble coping with restricted carbon emission laws.

This is a refined version of carbon trading, nonetheless, this is expected to reduce pollution and open scope for greener energy in the near future.

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How To Cut Costs While Going Green:

• Turn off the lights and turn off computers before leaving the office for the day.
• Encourage paperless documents as this will save on paper as well as printing ink.
• Considering solar panels for the office is an investment that will save money via electric bills and government grants for keeping them up for a certain amount of time.
• Look up any grants or programs that could benefit the company.

Going green has been hailed for years as a great PR move. However recent times are showing us it is far more than that.

Some companies like PepsiCo and Wal-Mart have already taken CSR very seriously. A glaring example of the acceptance of the idea of going green is the paperless billing procedure which has been adopted by ATMs, online retailers and many land based C2C businesses, too.

Although it still seems like a distant dream, many offices have proposed a completely paper-less workspace. A paper-less office is the dream of many environmental activists who have been trying for decades to raise awareness regarding the waste of paper and ink that in involved in creating invoices and applications each day which can easily be sent via electronic mail.