How to Make Your Small Business More Sustainable

Sustainability is a quality of increasing import to businesses in the UK, as both government legislation and public opinion lean away from pollutive practices and towards a more equitable future for the planet. Even small businesses can have a major impact on the environment, holding as they do a larger proportion of responsibility for local and global pollution levels than the average citizen. But what exactly can your small business do to bring down your carbon footprint, and chart a path to an eco-friendly future?

Ethical Sourcing of Materials

Your first port of call when reviewing the overall sustainability of your business should be your supply chain. Your business’ carbon footprint does not begin and end with your direct emissions, but stretches through relationships with other partners and suppliers – including the manufacturers and distributors that supply your raw materials or end-products.

Reviewing these relationships enables you to seek out businesses and partners that match your ethos on sustainability and eco-consciousness, whether through their own carbon-offsetting programmes or through eco-friendly manufacture and logistics processes.

Eco-Friendly Packaging

This practice can also extend to the presentation of products to customers. Non-recyclable and single-use plastics are a significant source of pollution, not just in their reliance on fossil fuels for manufacture but also in their nonbiodegradability, and resulting pollutive impacts on local ecosystems.

Rather than stocking single-use plastics in the form of carrier bags or print sleeves, you might consider paper alternatives; these are much less pollutive in terms of manufacture, and much easier for customers to recycle at home.

Sustainable Storefronts

There are ways in which you can embody sustainable practices through your physical storefront, too. If you own your brick-and-mortar premises, you might consider installing solar panels to subsidise your reliance on the electrical grid, and even upgrading your boiler system for increased efficiency.

With regard to shop aesthetic and layout, you might reflect your commitment to eco-friendliness through your decoration decisions. Sustainable signage could be used to direct customers around your store, and recyclable displays could form a central part of your store’s design.

Green Shipping

Of course, just as your carbon footprint extends back through your supply chain, it can also extend forwards through your products’ journey to your customers. This is particularly important a consideration to take where your business is digital, and consists largely of online orders for delivery.

In the same way that partners on the supply side can echo your values as an eco-conscious business, you might also find delivery and logistics services that put sustainability first – either with green delivery fleets or carbon offset agreements. For local deliveries, you might eschew conventional delivery services in favour of bicycle couriers, reinvesting in the local economy and reducing the carbon footprint of each individual delivery in the process.