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Reducing your business’ environmental impact can help manage costs. It can also meet the rising demand from customers who are making ethical purchase decisions. 

We have guidance on creating a sustainable business strategy to help reduce your environmental impact and improve the sustainability of your operations. 

If you’d like a bespoke sustainability strategy, please get in touch.

If you’re based in Scotland, you may also be eligible for free support that will reduce your business’ energy bills and cut your emissions. 

For more information, visit Business Energy Scotland. 

Applying a waste hierarchy lets you manage waste according to what’s best for the environment. For example, consider replacing products with others that have less packaging, easier to recycle or follow a circular economy model. 

You can also contact your waste carrier for their full recycling list to make sure you’re recycling as much as possible. Then you can set up appropriate bins. 

Remember that specialist waste can be recycled but must be separated. This includes items like: 

• electrical equipment 
• printer toner cartridges 
• batteries

Where possible, choose the highest energy efficient appliances and devices for your business. Generally, more efficient appliances will save emissions and money off your energy bills in the long run.

For example, replacing your lighting with low energy lights such as LEDs is a quick and relatively cheap way to reduce emissions.  

Having a sustainable travel hierarchy helps you think about reducing the impact of your journeys. The higher up the hierarchy, the more sustainable the travel option such as walking and cycling. Active travel and public transport can often be cheaper when accounting for the cost of maintaining a car. 

When vehicles are needed, try to buy/lease low emission vehicles or, if possible, electric vehicles. We provide transport support and information to organisations, helping them reduce emissions, energy usage and costs. Some of the support we offer includes: 

• Fleet advice and consultancy 
• Grey fleet review (Scotland only) 

Part of a low carbon travel strategy involves encouraging members of the organisation to drive more efficiently. And efficient driving reduces fuel bills, cuts emissions and lowers accident rates.

Furthermore, following these driving tips is a simple way to reduce the impact of your journeys. Efficient driving training generally sees immediate results, with average fuel savings of 15% on the day of training and up to 6% in the long term for fleets. 

When it comes to your energy tariff, many energy suppliers offer green tariffs, which means they’ll either: 

• match your usage with renewable energy generation 
• contribute towards environmental schemes on your behalf.  

These tariffs offer a positive way to tell the energy industry that you want to support renewable energy. For more information visit our switching energy supplier guide. 

Sustainability groups involve a group of enthusiastic staff members who: 

• discuss improvements specific to your organisation 
• organise internal environmental activities 
• promote sustainable behaviours 

Business Energy Scotland provides guidance on setting up a ‘Green Team’. You can also use their Resource Hub to help get them started.