An environmentally, or “green,” business can be achieved through many strategies, from going paper-free to promoting energy efficiency. Whether it be big or small, sustainable business ideas combine your commitment to the community with your pursuit of starting a business.
In addition to helping the environment, sustainable business practices also can drive revenue and profit. A survey by First Insight and Wharton’s Baker Retailing Center revealed that 89% of U.S. consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable products.
Are you ready to launch a green business and make a positive impact on your community? Here are a few tips that can help make your business more eco-friendly.
Tracking your environmental, social, and governance (ESG) commitment is a new way for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to show that they are making a positive impact on the environment.
As the name implies, an ESG score combines three factors:
Measuring your ESG efforts is not only an effective way to advance eco-friendly initiatives, but it is also becoming a driver for receiving financial investments.
Investors are increasingly acknowledging non-financial ESG factors as part of their analytical procedures to determine material risks at companies. Therefore, smaller organizations often share ESG-related information to help investors evaluate the sustainability of an organization.
Add it to the list of many things SMBs gain by going green.
Investors are not the only people applying non-financial ESG factors to their analytical processes, but invoice funders are doing so as well.
In the past, deciding whether or not to fund (or purchase) an invoice was largely based on the creditworthiness of sellers and buyers. As one of the leaders in this “green funding” effort, Crowdz has been supporting funders in these purchasing decisions by providing insight into the sustainability practices of companies seeking invoice funding.
To kickstart this initiative, Crowdz rebranded its “Smart Score” risk-rating tool to Sustainability, Risk, and Financial (SuRF) Score. This eco-friendly scoring tool combines real-time financial data with sustainability metrics to allow eco-conscious funders to track their company’s progress in becoming more environmentally friendly in their investment decisions.
Beyond that, the Crowdz platform provides business owners with tips for sustainability improvements to help drive even more positive change in their local communities. To learn more, read this blog post about how sustainability can be part of the receivables funding risk assessment.
For decades, paper use and documentation have played a major role in operating a business. But with many communication activities and other business processes moving online, an increasing number of organizations are considering going paperless altogether in an effort to save money and help the environment.
Examples of some of the techniques these companies are using include:
Although going paperless within your small business may require some nontrivial process changes, it will eliminate a lot of unnecessary waste.For instance, studies show that 20% of print jobs are never even retrieved from printers, while as much as 50% of all printed material on any given business day ends up in the trash by today’s end.
One of the most effective ways to promote eco-consciousness is to reduce energy-draining power and lighting use.The less energy your company uses, the lower both your environmental impact and your utility costs will be. And in many cases, making even large changes in your energy usage will have minimal impact on your everyday business processes.
For example, by decreasing the brightness on your computer monitor from 100% to 70%, you can save up to 20% of the monitor’s energy. Reducing your “sleep” setting from two hours to 20 minutes can save even more. Imagine the impact of this change if it were made across your entire organization. Most employees won’t notice the difference, but making adjustments like these will greatly reduce your environmental footprint.
Another adjustment to consider is investing in energy-efficient lighting and smart plugs. Many eco-friendly lights provide the same brightness as traditional bulbs but use 90% less energy. Better yet, combining lights with smart plugs, which allow users to control lighting and other electronic devices’ on/off status remotely, allows lights to last 15 times longer, resulting in big financial savings on operations and maintenance.
In terms of other types of power usages, some steps you can take include:
Commercial buildings account for 17% of the water consumption, making them the second-largest consumers of publicly supplied water in the United States. Therefore, reducing water usage is a crucial factor in ensuring a bright future for our environment.
A few ways to conserve more water at your small business include:
Every organization uses water in different ways – and some more than others. Start tackling this issue by first determining how much water you use and where you use it, and then implement techniques like those above to reduce it.
Small businesses generate 44% of U.S. economic activity in the United States, and yet millions of these organizations are at risk of closing every day.
At Crowdz, we are working to ensure that small and midsize companies, including startups have a chance to succeed. We created a white-label receivables-financing service in order to accelerate cash flow and increase working capital, which are two powerful ways of keeping companies’ doors open.
There are obvious financial and business-survival reasons for these efforts, but there is a less obvious justification as well: companies that are more financially stable have an easier time focusing on environmentally-protective measures, which – as it happens – can enhance their financial stability even further.
To join the movement and get involved, click here.