Is Your Business Seeing Green? - Simple Things Your Business Can Do To Become More Earth-Friendly

With all the talk about helping our planet becoming a cleaner, healthier place to live over the past few years, many businesses are faced with new challenges when it comes to addressing environmental issues in the work place and in their specific industries. One of the first questions a business owner might have is “why would I want to get involved in helping clean our planet?”

This is a question I had originally, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought, “why wouldn’t I want to become a contributor?” After all, if we care about future generations, we should all share the responsibility of helping maintain a healthy world, right?

I’m not talking about businesses that pour out tons of pollutants into the environment here and I definitely don’t want to get into a political debate over this.

The point of this article is just to raise the awareness of how businesses can easily pitch in and help the environment with little effort (and without having a negative affect on profits).

Although I’m not affiliated with any “green-Earth” political movements, I do enjoy the great outdoors and do appreciate anyone who volunteers to help with clean up efforts. Maybe you’re a business owner who shares these same values.

Are There Negatives In Going Green?

Having spoken with many business owners over the years, I’ve discovered that one of the main reasons why there’s been a hesitancy to “going green” may be due to politics. In other words, many business owners look at going green as seeming “too political” for their business. By publicly showing that their business supports a green environment position, they’re afraid it might actually “hurt” their business, not help. In reality, the opposite may be true!

Business Attitudes Are Changing

If you are in a business to business environment, there is a very good chance that these other businesses are looking for green-friendly affiliates.

Example:
Let’s say that a business has decided to go green. Many times businesses that go green are looking for other environmentally-conscious businesses to deal with. If you don’t have any type of environmental policies set in place, there’s a very good chance that these potential customers and/or vendors will go elsewhere with their business. What if one of these businesses just happened to be one of your biggest competitors?

Is this what you want? …giving away your business to competitors? Of course not.

Right now, you might be saying…

“This doesn’t apply to our business: There is nothing we can do to help with the environment”

Although it might seem as though this doesn’t apply to your business, then you may not be looking hard enough or taking this serious enough. There are plenty of “little things” you can do. All you have to do is make a small effort and take a look around.

Here are a few things you can do to get started:

• Set up recycling bins. Put them near shredders/copy machines, in office hallways, near soft-drink machines and in lunch rooms.
• Try and use the sink disposal for food items.
• Whenever possible, purchase recycled items, such as copier paper and other office supplies.
• Use refillable printer cartridges for printers and copier machines.
• If you are trashing computer parts, find places that can take these parts and either refurbish them for charities or contact a computer recycling business to take them off your hands.
• Look for other Earth-friendly businesses to do business with.

If you look around, there are many things your business can do to make an impact on cleaning up the environment.

What about the fire alarm Industry?

If you own a fire alarm business, then listen up!

One of the things you can do is make sure your employees are properly disposing their batteries. Throwing used fire alarm batteries in the trash dumpster is not only irresponsible, but in most jurisdictions, it’s illegal!

At Houston Fire Safety, we take all our used batteries to battery recycling centers.

Here’s something else your fire alarm (or security) company can do…

Ion smoke detectors

In case you’ve forgotten, Ion smoke detectors have small amounts of radiation embedded within their units (for more details, read this article concerning Ion smoke detectors).

By itself, an Ion smoke detector is quite harmless to humans and animals. But what happens when you replace an entire fire alarm system? There is a good chance you have hundreds of Ion heads to dispose of.

Over the years, I’ve personally stopped technicians from throwing out these smoke detectors in the customer’s dumpsters.

Informing your technicians is as easily as bringing up the subject during your next safety meeting. I’m not quite sure what the repercussions are for dumping radiation (no matter how small the amount), but I’m willing to bet, like batteries, it’s another illegal act and could possibly cost your business more money than it takes to properly dispose of these units.

Service Your Vehicles

Checking tire pressures, replacing air filters, changing and recycling oil on your service vehicles will not only will save you fuel and unforeseen break-downs, but it also helps save the environment as well.

A well-maintained service vehicle is not only safe, but a very smart thing to do for your business (and Mother-Nature).

Looking for places in your area to dispose of used batteries and Ion smoke detectors?

A great place to start is located at Earth 911. Earth 911 is not just another pretty website, it’s a search engine of sorts that will help you find recycling centers in your region.

Take the Houston Fire Safety’s “Green Challenge” and do your part. The world (and your customers) will thank you for it.

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