Corporate workplaces can potentially generate a vast amount of greenhouse wastes if an environment conscious approach is not taken into building and maintaining it. Companies can automatically get leverage over their competitors if they can manage to get their green credentials straight. Making your company eco friendly will attract investors and customers. There are several ways in which companies can achieve sustainability and environmentally ethical. Reducing the carbon footprints of the employees as well as the locations might be an effective way to gain green credentials.
Sustainable infrastructure
The first step towards achieving green credentials is by ensuring that all the official branches of the office are built from ethically sourced sustainable materials. The building should be insulated thoroughly up to its highest standards. The raw materials should generate minimum carbon emission and if possible, they should be recycled and recyclable.
The building should be designed in such a way that it requires minimal or absolute no heating or cooling. HVAC or Heating, Ventilation and Air Condition Systems generate maximum amount of waste when it comes to buildings and offices. If they are designed in an environmentally conscious manner, they can even be made zero-waste.
In the workplace if the employees are encouraged to take stairs instead of the elevator or are told to commute sustainably from their homes to office. Several companies, such as IBM, have introduced a decade-long energy conservation program which has helped them to save 5 percent of their company’s total energy. IKEA has installed solar panels to conserve and export energy. Accenture has been encouraging its employees to reduce waste, and commute sustainably with occasional work from homes, which has reduced their carbon dioxide emission by half.
Integrating Sustainability Into The Brand
It is often not enough to just encourage employees to reduce, reuse, and recycle in order to be more eco friendly. It is important to build sustainability into the company brand and ethics. By introducing more and more projects that prioritize environment and natural conservation, a company can make its employees more well versed with the codes of sustainability and make them more invested in adopting a more environment conscious approach in their own lifestyle.
For example, brands like Patagonia have made several brand advertisements which encourage people to wear their old clothes and not buy new clothes very frequently. Unilever has gone so far as to adopt sustainability into its company logo. At present, Unilever’s commitment to sustainability through its ethics code and policies are the main reasons why most of their employees choose to work for the brand.