If you haven’t been reading the news lately, you might’ve missed out on all of the environmental headlines that have been cropping up recently. All of the oil spills, drilling locations, hurricanes, temperature highs and lows, and other environmental news is becoming more and more frequent these days. It is just a simple fact of life that we are running into more and more environmental problems as time goes on. What does this mean for your business? If you’re someone who cares at all about the environment, you should not only seek to increase your and my mental consciousness at home, but should also work to integrate into all of your business processes as well. After all, it might be more expensive at first, but the goodwill and good publicity you’ll get from doing this is going to be explosive for your business.
Not All About Profit!
One of the things that we need to consider these days is that capitalism might not be enough to run a business. People are backlash against the idea of pure capitalism, since it eschews any other motivating factor besides profit or shareholder value. If you’re a private company, the answer would be profit, and if you’re a public company, the answer would be shareholder value. In essence they are one and the same. They are the pursuit of net profit over any other factor that a business can be based on.
It’s no revolutionary fact that businesses must make money in order to stay in business. However, making as much money as possible is starting to be an ideal that is much less favored in the eyes of both consumers and governments alike. If you can give back a little bit as a company, you might garner both goodwill and a positive feeling in your own life.
The Key: Efficiency
When it comes to practical solutions for your business, there are a whole host of options. From “greening out” your supply chain to being more energy efficient in your office, the possibilities are endless. However, we want to focus on one specific opportunity that you can take to drastically reduce both your expenses and your environmental impact. This is a unique situation, since becoming more environmentally conscious in your business usually means incurring extra expense.
If you own a relatively small company, you can move into a serviced office space that offers full amenities at a fraction of the cost of leasing, buying, or renting your own office space. Not only will you get a full service facility – coffee, lounge, dining, balconies, etc. – but you will get this at an extremely discounted price. They can do this simply because they offer the same service to many different businesses, and in the aggregate they make quite a bit of money packaging the services together this way.
Your business will incur much less expensive in the way of utilities, food, and general overhead that is associated with running a building. If you really think about it, what you’re doing is creating a bunch of common rooms that different businesses can use for the exact same purpose. Not only does this cut back on construction costs, but it also fosters goodwill and a sense of community within businesses. You never know what sort of deals you will rustle up simply by sharing a latte with someone who is renting a serviced office near you.
Taking these sorts of steps in your business might feel a little bit uncomfortable at first. That’s okay! Change is the only thing that is going to drive business forward, and change is exactly what we need in a time where the environment is becoming an increasingly heavy focus for both consumers and businesses alike. If you want to keep playing this game of business, you’re going to need to play by the new rules – and the new rules say that the environment matters. It’s not even a question when you consider that you will also save money by moving to a serviced office, but you should also consider going green and other aspects of your business as well – we’ll just leave finding those aspects up to you.
By author John Szabo. John usually writes about personal finance, but business life is something he’s really familiar with as well. This time he writes for DryLand Serviced Offices London, the premier retailer of London offices.
Be An Environmentally Conscious Business
