6 Ways to Ensure Energy Efficient Business and Save Money

Many of us set up businesses with the hope that our startups will scale up immediately and give us the much-desired financial freedom. However, startups have to be boot-strapped and have to survive on meager resources until they get a steady revenue flow.

When we are employees of large enterprises, we tend to waste a lot of resources within our organizations, thus costing a lot of money in the long run. However, once you start up on your own, you’re forced to understand the need to improve on energy efficiency, so that you can enhance the growth of your respective companies.

You become more conscious about this effort, simply because you’re now running on your own finances. More so, there’s that added responsibility of complying with your corporate social responsibility, which includes environmentalism. This is of utmost importance since more eco-friendly practices generally result in better health for your community. In switching to more energy-efficient modes of running your business, you’re essentially hitting three birds with one stone.

Simple Steps to run an Energy Efficient Business

Here are six simple steps to run an energy-efficient business that can surely yield financial success for you if they’re followed diligently:

Switching To Post-Consumer Waste

When it comes to printing, there are so many options of paper at our disposal, but most of these white papers do not possess environmentally friendly qualities. You may still have to use these kinds of paper for documents that need formality, or those that must be sent to other businesses, and for other transactions. However, for other types of printing use, such as intra-office memos, scratch and reports, among others, there’s an eco-friendly alternative that you can choose to switch to.

Post-consumer waste (PCW) paper or recycled paper is a category of printing paper that’s produced in a clean and green manner. By processing ordinary paper that ends up in our garbage, we can produce PCW paper such as handmade paper, machine-recycled paper, etc. Such PCW papers are not only cheap, but also serve the same purpose as regular printing papers. If you want your enterprise to grow and save money, then you must try to make use of this type of paper.

Replace Outdated Appliances With Greener Gadgets

Businesses require all kinds of equipment for managing operations, but prolonged use of these machines makes them inefficient since their mechanical parts are likely to be worn out. Besides, technology keeps on changing, and updated versions of office equipment keep entering the market. Arrival of modern machines makes their older versions obsolete since they utilize less energy in achieving much significant output. For example, electronic-based switches and LED bulbs are much more energy-efficient than older electromechanical switches and incandescent bulbs. So it is imperative that you adopt the use of updated electrical equipment in your company for boosting both work productivity and power conservation.

Recycle every reusable material whenever possible

Since paper printing is still a requirement in any enterprise, we are compelled to purchase new printers. These printers make use of ink cartridges or ad toners that need to be replaced regularly. When ink levels deplete, most of us choose to dispose of the cartridges in the garbage—a major factor that contributes to environmental degradation. However, many of us don’t know that there is a better way of reusing these printer components by refilling them with ink. As a company manager, it should be your responsibility to refill your cartridges whenever they run dry, a move that will not only save you money, but also improve environmental conditions.

Power Your Office With Renewable Energy

Clean electric energy is now available abundantly at affordable rates. Although many institutions today rely on electricity generated from coal or hydropower that proves to be unreliable and harmful to the environment. So, you could deviate from this norm and integrate the use of solar energy or wind energy in your enterprise so as to eliminate the chances of unexpected power surges. Fitting your rooftop with solar panels can help reduce your electric bill as well as earn revenue when you sell power back to the electric grid.

Move to energy efficient lighting and cooling

Lighting and air cooling are the biggest power-consuming activities in any office. Thankfully, there are now so many energy-efficient options for lighting as well. These would include LED bulbs and solar street light installations for the perimeter around your business. Replace all the incandescent lights and CFL bulbs with LED bulbs since these are now cheaper and much more energy efficient. Using LED lights can result in saving 80% to 85% of power consumption as compared to incandescent lights.

Similarly, choose the most energy-efficient air conditioners for your office since they are the biggest power-consuming appliances. Always prefer to use air coolers since they can bring down the temperature by 10 degrees by just consuming the power of a regular fan. If it’s absolutely essential to go for air conditioning, then ensure the ambient temperature is always kept between 22 to 24 degrees celsius.

Energy Audit Your Firm

Auditing your enterprise for energy efficiency is an ingenious way of improving on your bottomline by eliminating the chances of wastage. An energy audit allows business owners to identify any weaknesses in the firm, which if worked upon can become your strengths.

Final Word

Finally, it’s a well-documented fact that companies that encourage the use of green energy regularly reap enormous benefits in the long run and become-energy efficient businesses. As much as we all like to make money, it’s essential that we advocate the use of renewable sources of energy so as to reduce the rate at which our environment is getting depleted.
This act of being more environment-friendly brings benefits not just to the environment per se, but even to your finances as well. When you’re more efficient with your energy use, and more responsible about your waste, you’re also spending less in resources.