Be Seen Go Green

There are many reasons why making your company eco-friendly is such a great idea. There are also several myths about doing so – the major one being that it’s expensive. Making your company green doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, it can save you money – so it’s really worth exploring what you can do to make a few changes.

What’s more, in today’s society where more and more people are concerning themselves with the environment, ethical companies gain more public respect. If your company proves itself to be ethical regarding environmental concerns, you could find yourself gaining a few more loyal customers who are enticed by your moral attitude.

So how can you green up your business? There are plenty of ways. The current buzz is all about reducing your carbon footprint, and one way of achieving this is by simply using less power. This may sound like a difficult task, but when you think about how many people don’t switch their computers off at the end of the night, or leave unnecessary lights on, a simple company email reminding people to do what they can to conserve precious energy is enough to make an adequate start. Conserve paper by emailing and discourage unnecessary photocopying.

Another way to go green is to make changes to your IT department. Whether you have an in house server or your company is big enough to need a data centre, large or small, these machines use a great deal of power and it is easy to curb this.

Technologies in the computing world, such as virtualisation and cloud computing have made it so that many IT aspects can be moved onto fewer servers rather than many, or placed online. Virtualisation allows you to ‘virtualise’ your servers and stack them all onto one machine that can access each interface. Cloud computing simply allows all software and applications to be accessed online, meaning far less hardware is needed and you can even let employees work from home, thus using less petrol due to being relieved of their daily commute.

Greening up your business really can be simple, and it’s cost-effective too. Using less power means lower energy bills and the two IT technologies mentioned above cost just a tiny fraction of what traditional in-house IT amounts to. Having a green business is a satisfying, ethical practice and one that could lower your carbon footprint, gain your company more public respect and help you save money – so see what you can do to start going green.