There are a lot of benefits to making your company greener. Not only does it help the environment, but it can also lead to major cost savings in the long run. Going green and utilizing green technology can help businesses cut down on energy bills while simultaneously increasing productivity and innovation. While you may really care about the environment and want to restructure everything in your business to make it sustainable, sometimes that just isn’t an option. Barriers like the type of industry your business is or lack of capital for environmentally friendly upgrades keep some businesses from reducing their carbon footprint. Even if that is the case, we’ve found seven easy ways to shrink your company’s carbon footprint that anyone can do!

1. Switch to more energy efficient lighting and make sure lights are switched off when out of use. Energy saving lightbulbs use anywhere between 25%-80% less energy than traditional lightbulbs, thus saving you money and reducing the amount of energy consumed. In addition, make sure that lights are turned off at the end of the day or when they aren’t being used.
2. Recycle more. This seems like a pretty obvious idea but the reality is that people, and especially companies, don’t recycle enough. This could be because people don’t know what to recycle or where to take it, but recycling is extremely beneficial. It diverts waste away from landfills and helps the environment in addition to reducing your company’s carbon footprint.
3. Travel less frequently. With all of the new technology there is now, sometimes videoconferencing or even a phone call would suffice rather than driving or flying in for a meeting. Cutting down on travel means cutting down on carbon emissions.
4. Go paperless (or try to). This is another obvious one, but it is still important. The less paper used = the more trees saved. A great way to reduce paper usage is to make your documents and files digital.
5. Use products with recycled content. There are plenty of companies that make and sell office supplies made from recycled material. These products take less energy to process and manufacture than regular products, so try swapping out your regular pens for some that were made from salvaged paper and plastic or use trash bags made with recycled content (like our Greencore® can liners and recycling bags) rather than typical virgin plastic bags.
6. Switch up your supply chain. A good portion of a company’s carbon footprint comes from their supply chain. When trying to decrease your own company’s carbon footprint, partnering with sustainable and environmentally friendly suppliers, like Greencore®, can really help.
7. Last but not least, turn off your computer at the end of the day. The reasoning for this is very simple: you are not there, so why should it be on? Even if you let it go into energy saving sleep mode, you’re still using more energy than if it were just turned off.

In summary, even if you only implement a few of these ideas, it will still help decrease your company’s carbon footprint, thus helping you save money and the environment.

Greencore® is a division of Petoskey Plastics serving a multitude of markets in the custom packaging industry. Our constantly evolving research, technologies, and materials have led to a long list of high-performance polyethylene products that are both good for the environment and good for the customers. Some of our products include can liners, retail trash bags, recycling bags, compactor bags, and Greencore® Can Sacks™.

Learn more at greencoreproducts.com.