One of the essentials of running a successful business is avoiding waste, so it makes perfect business sense to ensure that your working environment doesn’t waste energy. As with saving energy in the home, it’s about making both practical changes and mind-sets changes, to develop your staff’s energy saving habits. It’s good for the planet, it’s good for your finances and it’s good for the public image of your business.
Insulation – Insulation in the workplace is every bit as important as it is in the home. Roofs, windows and doors are key areas where heat is lost. Even though you may have double glazing, as much as 50% of your heat can be lost through windows so invest in energy efficient blinds which will help keep your building warm in winter and cool in summer. This will save you money and keeping your staff comfortable.
Turn down the heating. This is not about becoming Ebenezer Scrooge and not allowing your staff any heating but it’s about being aware of over-heating. Turning down the thermostat by 1% saves 8% in heating costs. Nearly half of the UKs CO2 emissions are the result of heating and cooling buildings.
Lighting -The UK wastes £170 million a year by leaving lights on and don’t believe that much quoted myth that it uses more energy to turn lights on and off than to just leave them on, it’s wrong, completely. Unnecessary lights need to be turned off and where possible make full use of natural lighting. Ensure that all your lighting is provided by low energy LED lights.
Laptops v PCs – Laptops require less energy than PCs and they allow for a more flexible and creative way of working too. A third of a PC’s energy is used by its monitor and reducing monitor brightness from 100% to 70% can save up to 20% of the energy a monitor uses. And if you think that screen savers save energy, they don’t. Set your devices to go into sleep mode after a few minutes of inactivity.
Never leave machines or chargers on stand-by. Did you know thatleaving a photocopier on stand-by overnight wastes enough energy to produce 1500 copies.
Invest in a smart meter.You need to know what you are spending in order to make savings. Don’t rely on estimates, a smart meter will provide you with real-time information about energy use to help cut your costs.
Go paperless – perhaps your business cannot go entirely paperless, but any reduction can help your workplace to make savings and improve efficiency. Receipts can instead be scanned, and information can be stored as digital files. Clients can be texted and emailed. Many businesses now use cloud accounting systems, which offer a favourable level of security and provide automatic backups regularly. All this will help you save on electricity, ink cartridges and paper.
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