Beyond the Basics- Ways to be More Sustainable in Business

Running your business in a more sustainable way is something that all entrepreneurs should be thinking about. According to data from the CDP Carbon Majors Report (and other global environmental sources) around 70 to 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from business and industrial activities. The remaining 25 to 30% comes from household or individual-level activities but the majority is from business. People often bring up water use or recycling, but that barely scratches the surface. If you want to run things in a way that actually makes a difference, it’s worth paying attention to the smaller details.

Rethink Your Packaging Choices

If your business uses any kind of packaging like shipping products or presenting items in store, it helps to look beyond the label. Just because something’s marked recyclable doesn’t mean it actually gets recycled. If it’s hard to separate or clean then it usually ends up in landfill anyway. Try using supplies and materials that break down without special handling or, even better, ones that can be reused. Some suppliers now offer packaging that customers can send back, along with protective padding made from mushroom fibre or cornstarch instead of plastic.

Work With Smarter Suppliers

A big part of business sustainability comes down to who you buy from. With everything from office supplies, ingredients, or stock, suppliers do make a difference. Choose companies that avoid plastic in their deliveries, combine items into fewer shipments, or use electric vehicles for transport. Some businesses offer takeback schemes for things like containers or pallets, and others work on a closed loop system where waste from one process becomes the input for another. Even if your own operation is small, being part of a better supply chain makes a bigger impact than focusing only on your own footprint.

Switch to Reusables Where You Can

Look around your workplace and it’s usually easy to spot the single use items. Not just cups and bags, but shipping materials, office products, even cleaning supplies. It’s often cheaper in the long run to invest in reusables. That might mean switching from paper towels to washable cloths or using refillable dispensers instead of individual packaging. It could be switching to bamboo utensils which are much more sustainable than plastic. 

Use What You Already Have

Being sustainable isn’t always about buying new products with green labels, one of the simplest things you can do is get more use out of what you already have and it saves you money too. Office chairs and tables can be fixed or picked up secondhand. Staff uniforms can be rotated, repaired, or handed down. Even things like signs or printed materials can be adjusted and reused instead of getting thrown away. Rather than swapping everything out just to look the part, focus on using what you already have for as long as you can.