Last week we delved in­to the con­cept of green­ing your busi­ness op­er­a­tions and ex­plained that it is one that strives to have a pos­i­tive im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment and com­mu­ni­ty. We al­so dis­cussed the ben­e­fits to mov­ing to­wards adopt­ing green or sus­tain­able prac­tices with­in your op­er­a­tions. To­day we take a look at just how you can adopt a more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly re­spon­si­ble stance through the dai­ly op­er­a­tions of your busi­ness.

Do it with a green team

As en­vi­ron­men­tal aware­ness and im­pact to our en­vi­ron­ment be­come more ev­i­dent, many em­ploy­ees feel that their em­ploy­ers could do even more to pro­mote en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly prac­tices. Grow­ing num­bers of busi­ness­es world­wide are now de­vel­op­ing "green teams" to cap­ture the col­lec­tive pas­sion and ex­per­tise of a group of em­ploy­ees.In some cas­es hav­ing a sus­tain­abil­i­ty of­fi­cer is now the norm–86 per cent of large com­pa­nies have at least one per­son fo­cused full time on sus­tain­abil­i­ty.With up­per man­age­ment's sup­port, a di­verse green team can build sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives based on in­di­vid­ual, group and com­pa­ny ca­pa­bil­i­ties and strengths. Green team ini­tia­tives can start with a small group of peo­ple fo­cus­ing on cost-ef­fec­tive ways to im­prove in­ter­nal op­er­a­tions, to big­ger, more for­malised pro­grammes.Here are a few op­tions your or­gan­i­sa­tion could adopt in meet­ing the sus­tain­abil­i­ty chal­lenge.

Re­duce, reuse, re­cy­cle

Al­though the con­cept is clich�d, the essence of this renowned tri-word phrase is ef­fec­tive­ly rel­e­vant in to­day's world. Con­sid­er eval­u­at­ing ways in which your or­gan­i­sa­tion could re­duce the ma­te­r­i­al goods and/or ser­vices that come in­to your busi­ness or or­gan­i­sa­tion, and de­ter­mine if you can use less.

Al­low telecom­mut­ing

Telecom­mut­ing has come a long way, es­pe­cial­ly in the age of Skype, iChat, Viber and oth­ers. Set up a vir­tu­al pri­vate net­work for your staff and en­joy the en­hanced pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, re­duced com­mute times and pol­lu­tion and gain ex­tra em­ploy­ee sat­is­fac­tion. Tele­con­fer­enc­ing and video con­fer­enc­ing be­tween of­fices is al­so quite ef­fec­tive.

Sus­tain­able sup­plies

Have you ever won­dered where your of­fice sup­plies come from? What body of wa­ter was pol­lut­ed to make that Post-It Note, pen or pa­per? Here's your op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­duct an in­ven­to­ry of where your of­fice sup­plies come from and sup­port com­pa­nies that se­lect on­ly eth­i­cal, more sus­tain­able so­lu­tions. For in­stance, con­sid­er clean­ing com­pa­nies that use green clean­ing prod­ucts; pur­chase en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly�friend­ly pa­per stock and ink; and con­sid­er en­er­gy star ap­pli­ances for your work­space.

Just say no toin­can­des­cent light bulbs

Re­place in­can­des­cent light bulbs with com­pact flu­o­res­cent light bulbs (CFLs). Ac­cord­ing to the En­er­gy Star pro­gramme, the av­er­age rat­ed life of a CFL is be­tween eight and 15 times that of an in­can­des­cent; it will mean less time on a lad­der, small­er elec­tric­i­ty bills, and less cool­ing load, since the in­can­des­cent emits a lot of heat.

Save wa­ter, pow­er

Con­sid­er adopt­ing con­ser­va­tion poli­cies with­in your or­gan­i­sa­tion geared to­wards in­form­ing and ed­u­cat­ing staff about the ben­e­fits of wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty con­ser­va­tion habits. Mon­i­tor util­i­ty bills and im­ple­ment strate­gies such as: reg­u­lar main­te­nance on all pipes, wa­ter fix­tures and elec­tri­cal units, en­sure elec­tri­cal ap­pli­ances are op­ti­mal­ly op­er­a­tional, do not open win­dows in an air con­di­tioned en­vi­ron­ment, lock off taps when not in use and turn off elec­tric­i­ty in the build­ing when the work day is done. These habits re­duce waste and costs.

Good green gov­er­nance

A green ap­proach to peo­ple prac­tices is at the core of good green gov­er­nance. Adopt­ing these and oth­er sus­tain­able prac­tices will con­tribute to­wards valu­ing peo­ple for their con­tri­bu­tions in the work place. Many com­pa­nies con­sid­er green prac­tices to be vi­tal to re­main­ing com­pet­i­tive and many af­firm that these prac­tices are con­tribut­ing to prof­its. The sus­tain­able ap­proach to busi­ness op­er­a­tions is there­fore main­ly a win-win sit­u­a­tion for the or­gan­i­sa­tion, its em­ploy­ees and our en­vi­ron­ment. Through en­gag­ing and in­volv­ing com­mu­ni­ties and vil­lages in­to its en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly-re­lat­ed Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty (CSR) ini­tia­tives, they can not on­ly prac­tice green liv­ing but en­cour­age oth­ers to adopt the same prin­ci­ples. Or­gan­i­sa­tions, busi­ness­es and en­ter­pris­es pos­sess the pow­er, in­flu­ence and the right mix of in­gre­di­ents to ef­fec­tive­ly im­ple­ment sus­tain­able best prac­tices in­to their op­er­a­tions while be­com­ing busi­ness role mod­els for oth­ers.This is the in­spi­ra­tional type of cor­po­rate lead­er­ship that our na­tion re­quires to progress. In­ter­lock­ing the cor­po­rate world with the con­cept of con­serv­ing our en­vi­ron­ment is the key to evolv­ing cor­po­rate suc­cess in­to suc­cess of the hu­man race.