When you think of spring, what do you think of?  For most people, they’ll say flowers, butterflies, and the beginning of the baseball season.  However, for others, they’ll immediately turn towards spring cleaning.  Spring is the time to remove the clutter from their homes to enjoy a more efficient, lighter form of living.

Businesses operate in the same manner.  Businesses are constantly looking to remove the extra waste and become greener.  This will not only reduce their carbon footprint – it will also reduce their bottom line as they save money.  If you’re a business owner and you’re looking to make your business greener this spring, here are a few good areas to start:

Take a Look at Where You’re Wasting Paper

Although Michael Scott of The Office won’t want you to know this secret, using paper is a thing of the past.  Most communications nowadays can be done through email, and if you do need to use a printer, remember to use recycled inkjet cartridges.

“My business is becoming greener this spring”.  Funny Business by Digital Sextant, on Flickr.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Encourage Public Transportation and Carpooling

This is another easy way for businesses to reduce their carbon footprint.  Business owners should encourage public transportation and carpooling of their employees whenever possible.  To make it more worth their while, they can offer financial incentives as well as develop contests to see who can reduce their carbon footprint the most.

Take a Look at Their Vehicles

If the business in question requires a fleet of vehicles to maintain operations, it might make sense to look into green vehicle fleet management.  Whether this means obtaining vehicles that are more fuel efficient or optimizing routes to ensure that the least amount of ground is covered and heavy traffic is avoided, this is certainly a worthwhile factor to consider.

Review How You Use Energy

Businesses might benefit from considering how they use energy.  Depending on the industry the business is in, it could benefit from using EnergyStar appliances and recommended practices.  Evidence has shown using heating and cooling appliances that are energy-efficient can help a business reduce their carbon footprint by a significant amount.  In addition, consider using blinds and curtains to control indoor temperatures and businesses should also monitor water use.

Recommend Green Initiatives to Friends

As a business, you’ll most likely have friends and followers on your various social media platforms.  Therefore, an easy way to make your green initiative worthwhile is to recommend your green initiatives to individuals who are connected to you on social media.  Keep them abreast of what you’re doing and link to articles about why it’s important to preserve the environment.  Before you know it, your actions in the office will extend far outside your building’s walls.

There’s no question that your green actions can have a great impact not only on your own bottom line but on the environment as well.  The initiatives mentioned above are an easy way to get started.  No matter big or small, the actions businesses take today can be beneficial both today and tomorrow.  How are you going greener with your business?