How Sustainable Is Your Business?

We work across the SME community and are often asked about carbon footprint and sustainability. While the importance of sustainability and what carbon footprint a business creates is and is going to be even more of an important factor, many businesses remain unaware of what they can PRACTICALLY do to make their business more sustainable while enhancing their business prospects and performance. Businesses also ask us ‘why should we care?’ – what will happen if we don’t bother?’ – and we can answer those questions very openly and honestly. Ignore this area and at some point, your business will be negatively affected in some way, shape or form.

Sustainability is a complex subject and there are many routes to improve the carbon footprint within any business.

Here are a few points that are worth knowing and understanding:

Only a relatively small percentage of SME’s have a plan to make their business more sustainable.

Businesses supplying large corporates (for example) will be excluded from the supply chain unless they can demonstrate the right sustainability credentials.

Businesses who do have a plan and who are making key changes will give themselves a competitive advantage over their competition.

Businesses who have a plan will improve their reputation in their market and be seen as market leaders.

Being a sustainable business can REDUCE costs and INCREASE profits which comes as a bit of a pleasant surprise, as the perception is often the reverse of this outcome.

Sustainability is involved in every step of the Product Processing sequence and also in our everyday activities in being at and getting to and from our work premises. It features in the purchase of products, the manufacture of products, the actual use of them and also the way they are disposed of.

In the case of disposal the more products can be re-cycled and re-used the smaller the carbon footprint that the business produces.

Some simple, practical steps to reduce your carbon footprint:

Travel – are journeys really always necessary – the advent of Teams and Zoom have transformed the landscape here and made journeys to meetings unnecessary in some instances – this saves on fuel and positively affects the carbon footprint. Think about this and attend in person only those meetings where this is of value/importance (and there are situations where this IS the case).

Energy – where does your business get its energy from? Are there environmentally friendly ways that you can generate energy – for example a number of businesses have switched to solar power. Where businesses have people ‘on the road’ they are moving to hybrid or electric vehicles to reduce their footprint by reducing the use of fossil fuels.

Logistics – where delivery is part of your process – how efficient is your delivery fleet – how environmentally friendly are the suppliers who deliver your raw materials?

The above is just a small selection of the type of things that a small to medium size business can practically do to improve their performance in this crucial area. The key thing to grasp is that you should look for your business to be a leader in this field in your market because, whoever and wherever you supply, your customers/ clients will be looking more and more, towards those businesses who see sustainability as crucial and who are demonstrating clearly that they are serious about reducing their carbon footprint.

The Growth Experts takes pride in ensuring that all of its advice and material on this site is current and relevant to our members. In certain pieces of material there may be reference to ‘time related’ situations (e.g. the Covid Pandemic). These pieces of material may well, in a number of cases, be left on the site because the advice and content therein remains relevant and of great value to businesses whatever their current challenges present.

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