Cultivating a sustainable culture within your company is important for prospective customers, future employees and workplace culture. Many organizations think that they need a major overhaul of their operations to improve their “green” image. However, here are five ways you can improve public perceptions about your company’s sustainability without having to change everything.
1. Go Paperless, When Possible, or Recycle It
It’s unlikely that you can donate your office printer and stop buying office supplies, such as envelopes, even if it would use fewer trees. However, your team can opt to rely more extensively on online tools internally to reduce paper consumption. Use a digital idea board, such as Trello, instead of a community board in the office breakroom, or send digital greeting cards to clients. When it’s not possible to go paperless, recycle
2. Partner With Sustainable Vendors
One quick way to improve your green image is to simply use sustainable vendors. If you rely on raw materials, try to find versions made from recycled components. Even if your business can’t modify its own operations to be more sustainable, your business can be more sustainable through the products and services you use.
3. Use Recycled Boxes and Shipping Supplies
Many businesses rely on boxes to ship and package products, which is wasteful since most of these materials are thrown out. Use sustainable packaging again to demonstrate your business’s commitment to green operations. Buy corrugated boxes made from recycled paper to reduce your business’s environmental impact.
4. Advertise Green Initiatives
When your company does something sustainable, make sure to let everyone know about it. It can be a positive promotional opportunity and encourage others to follow suit. Whether you reduce paper consumption or switch to recycled materials, customers care about these things.
5. Schedule Operational Audits
Sometimes it’s easy to think that you can’t do anything to become a greener company. An outsider’s perspective on your organization may lend additional insights that you and your team cannot see because you’re in the middle of your company’s operations. Consider hiring a third-party organization to audit your current operations to find opportunities to increase sustainability. If not, have one department review the operations of the other. You never know what they might suggest that ends up helping.
As you can see, there are many ways you can incorporate green operations into your business. By selecting a few sustainability strategies, you can slowly work toward a truly sustainable organization. Over time, you’ll replace more operations with more green versions.
About Pratt Industries and Sustainability
Pratt Industries has been America’s leading recycled paper and packaging company for over 25 years – dedicated to the sustainability of our planet, our customers and our people, and is recognized around the world for its environmental stewardship. Our sustainability strategy and commitment are based on four key principles:
- Provide high-performance, 100% recycled packaging solutions to our customers, enabling them to enhance their environmental stewardship
- Provide thousands of green-collar jobs
- Continue to grow our clean energy business
- Enhance the communities in which we live and work through diverse philanthropic investments of resources and funding