The credit crunch and the recession have pushed cost cutting higher up the business agenda than environmental concerns. But the two do not need to be mutually exclusive. A focus on sustainability can help with the survival of your business and the survival of the planet – and a few small changes can make a big difference, as FSN contributing editor Lesley Meall discovers with lots of advice and tips.
“Businesses are increasingly looking at ways to cut their costs as the challenging economic climate hits their bottom line,” reports Elaine Sharp, programme marketing manager with the sustainability specialist Envirowise. “Putting profit back into the business rather than seeing it wasting away is a great place to start,” she says, “ and we can see that those companies who have a positive attitude towards resource efficiency are reaping the rewards.”
Businesses spend substantial sums on materials and utilities, often involving significant wastage, and reducing this can help to increase profits without the need for increased turnover. Resource efficiency and profitability can go hand in hand; according to Envirowise, businesses can typically save between 1 and 3 per cent of turnover simply by putting resource and energy-efficient measures and in place.
Implementing resource efficiency projects has enabled the retailer Boots UK Ltd to cut its transport and disposal costs by £393,000 over an 18-month period. By re-using and re-selling pallets, Denso manufacturing saved £100,000 in two years.
Reducing water use by 50 per cent enabled the food producer Ginsters to cut its annual costs by £7,500. Reduced packaging helped Broadland Wineries to save £45,000 a year. Reusing plastic bottles and reducing the amount sent to landfill by 97 per cent, saved Strattons Hotel £2000 a year.
Benefits that translate to the bottom line can also extend beyond direct costs savings, as Graeme Johns, group financial controller with the logistics company Lloyd Fraser explains. ‘It’s not unusual for the company to receive requests to tender that demand ISO 14001 compliance or asking ‘How green are you?’”, he says, and the answer to this question can make the difference between winning or losing a contract or new client, so Lloyd Fraser takes sustainability very seriously.
The holistic approach
“We have centralised and streamlined the Groups’ finance systems and introduced electronic reporting using software from COA Solutions,” reports Johns, which has made the finance function more efficient and effective, eliminated paper and reduced the number of PCs necessary on each site. “Lloyd Fraser has also pioneered the use of biofuels,” he adds, “and put a lot of effort in on the operational side of things,” through environmental initiatives in the warehouses that it operates on behalf of its clients.
“We introduced an aisle lighting system that saves power by automatically switching itself off when it is and isn’t needed, at one of our major clients,” explains Mike Dennis, business development manager at Lloyd Fraser, and invested in a large crusher to pulp waste pallets, so that the client could use them to make fertiliser and generate extra revenue, instead of sending them to landfill. Lloyd Fraser is also exploring the potential of electric vehicles, windpower, and the ways in which aerodynamics can be used to cut vehicle fuel consumption.
All of this has helped Lloyd Fraser to ‘make friends and influence people’, attracting new clients and keeping existing ones happy, while saving money and helping to save the planet. But not all organisations are this proactive. “Although many businesses have already taken steps to improve their processes, there is always something more that can be done,” suggests Sharp, so the sustainability specialist has introduced the Envirowise Savings Calculator.
The calculator pools all relevant Envirowise guides and money-saving advice, so entering a few details into the calculator can reveal cost savings in areas such as paper, waste disposal, water, heating and transport. It can help businesses to minimise their costs and maximise their profits by creating a tailored and individual action plan, and offering hints on how to: identify the largest areas of waste production and greatest opportunities to improve performance, work with suppliers to reduce the amount of waste jointly produced, and gain staff support for waste reduction initiatives.
Small changes can have a potentially big impact on the business bottom line and the environment: even light bulb and mobile phone chargers can be big problems if enough of them are left plugged in while not in use. Lighting alone accounts for an estimated 20-25 per cent of the electricity we use, so conservation can quickly pay-off. Just switching unnecessary lights off, can cut as much as 15 per cent from our energy bills, and over time, replacing failing lights with energy-saving light bulbs and installing motion sensor lighting, can save even more.
Switch IT off
“Chargers still draw about 0.1-0.5 watts when a phone is not connected,” says, Markus Terho, Nokia's environmental affairs director, which costs UK consumers £47m a year and results in 250,000 tonnes of unnecessary carbon emissions (according the Energy Saving Trust). Not that phone chargers are the only equipment to waste energy (and money) if they left turned on while they are not in use. Switching off one photocopier before you leave the office for the evening can save enough energy overnight to make about 1600 photocopies.
Savings can also be gained (and carbon emissions reduced) by turning off equipment during shorter periods of inactivity. Some computer monitors use twice as much power as the personal computer itself, so it is worth encouraging staff to turn their screen off before they go to a meeting or pop out for lunch. Barclays Bank expects to save an estimated £1m a year in energy costs as a result of a ban on screensavers. So instead of leaving faxes, printers, computers and so on, on standby, turn them off overnight, and during weekends and holidays.
Conserving paper can also have a positive impact on the bottom line and the environment. One office worker alone can get through 50 sheets of paper a day, and a lot of it is wasted printing that goes straight in the bin. According to Canon, British businesses spend an estimated £54.9bn churning out 4.6 million tonnes of waste paper each year. That’s enough to fill the Wembley stadium, right up to the roof, five times over – and reducing the waste can be even easier than remembering to unplug your mobile phone charger when it’s not in use.
Most of us take the path of least resistance, and if recycling bins are put next to printers, photocopiers and faxes and located close to people's desks, and rubbish bins are positioned further away, we will throw less away and recycle more, simply because it is easier. Consulting firm The Oxford Group saved £40,000 a year by implementing paper-saving initiatives: so why not set the printer default to duplex, opt for 80g paper instead of thicker sheets, avoid printing hard copies of digital documents, and choose recycled paper - it costs less to buy and takes less energy to produce.
Opt for recycling when it comes to printer ink too. Each year British businesses send an estimated 47m ink cartridges to landfill sites, where they are expected to take at least 450 years to decompose. Most inkjet cartridges can be refilled an average of 3 times, while laser cartridges can be remanufactured indefinitely, and can cost as much as 80 per cent less than new ones – without having a negative impact on print quality or page yield. So although the short term survival of a business may seem more pressing than the long term survival of the planet, it shouldn’t take an accountant to figure out that sustainability can be good for both.
