From Guest Blogger Anica Oaks: Four Intrinsic Ways Companies are Crucial to the Green Movement

There is a great deal of importance placed on the environmental movement and keeping a set of green behaviors in mind as far as personal use and consumption goes, but there are just as many ways for companies to make to make an impact as well. Many people seem to forget that a business could have a bigger impact on the environment than the average resident.

If you are an operational supervisor or a business manager, then you have the power to impact the environment in a positive way by doing just a few things differently at work. All that is necessary is a just a few basic, simple changes in focus, and there is a lot a business can accomplish to help the environment. Here are four examples of green business changes.

Use Green Landscaping Techniques

Certain types of landscaping can cause a large amount of wasted energy and resources. Planting trees, grass, shrubs and other living things that are drought resistant can reduce your water usage. You can also use green fertilizers and pesticides to reduce the impact of chemical runoff finding its way into local water sources.

Use Data to Promote Green Initiatives

A significant step to make your business greener is learning to understand where waste materials come from in the first place. Usually, waste materials are byproducts in parts of a factory or business where there is water usage, oil or gas use, and energy use, so it is wise to employ someone educated and experienced in keeping an eye on inventory control for all parts of assembly that have an impact on each of the finite uses mentioned above.

The more data you accumulate about these numbers will result in better ways to adjust internal policies and standards. Also, the best way to go about gathering data is to monitor inventory levels and adjust inventory control settings, especially where those energy uses mentioned above are utilized the most.

You can monitor and properly adjust those energy uses by hiring someone trained and educated specifically in inventory control and closed loop supply chains. An educated professional can implement specific strategies to reduce waste production.

Keep Up On Environmental News and Reviews

Specifically, make sure you stay current on positive environmental initiatives and strategies other businesses are using. If possible, you can slowly start employing part of these strategies, or you can make the entire strategy a new policy.

Consider developing a newsletter highlighting all of the strategies. You can print them out to hand out physical copies to all of your employees, or you can make an electronic newsletter to email to your employees. If you want to maximize the green strategies, you should make physical and electronic copies to distribute at the same time.

You can also talk to a professional with an online master’s degree in civil engineering to assess how a new business property can best maximize green industry standards. You can get a wealth of information by connecting with industry professionals.

Promote Green Employee Behavior

This is probably the easiest thing to do. If you make environmental choices available to employees, then they will probably choose the greener choice. For example, place several bins for recycling different types of recyclable trash, such as a bin for recyclable paper products, one for aluminum and others for other recyclables.

Also, you can offer incentives to employees for making a positive environmental choice. For example, you can make recycling products in the right recycling bins as a part of the criteria to determine employee of the month.

As a business manager, operational supervisor or the owner of a business, there are large green changes you can accomplish. All you have to do is keep tabs on the headlines and target problems with an environmental mindset as soon they pop up. Keep an eye out for opportunities to acquire more energy efficient company cars, lower-energy office equipment and use positive environmental information to change your company’s structure.