“We cannot hope to create a sustainable culture with any but sustainable souls.” – Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization
Are you a business owner? Or, are you perhaps responsible for managing technology and printing services for your employer?
The harsh reality is that the business organizational unit, irrespective of age, size, or the number of employees, must start considering sustainable business solutions like print-on-demand printing services.
Why?
By way of answering the “why” question, let’s look at what a sustainable business solution is and how to ensure that your business processes include environmentally friendly or sustainable solutions.
The importance of sustainable business practices
The continuing discussions around climate change, the impact of greenhouse gasses on the climate, and their economic consequences are probably the most relevant they have ever been.
The harsh reality is that the severe weather events like the rampant, out of control fires in Australia are caused, in part, by the increase in the global sea temperatures, resulting in hot, dry, windy conditions conducive to the outbreak of fires. Additionally, the heat from these fires is responsible for dry thunderstorms caused by the build-up of Pyrocumulonimbus clouds.
According to a news article published by the online Guardian newspaper on 8 January 2020, titled, “Economic impact of Australia’s fires set to exceed $4.4bn cost of Black Saturday,” the financial cost of the Australian bush fires is estimated to be more than $4.4 billion (AUD) or $2.95 billion (USD).
Therefore, these figures alone provide the raison d’etre for the global population, including government and private sectors, to implement environmentally friendly business processes.
Ways to develop sustainable business practices
As highlighted above, the next question that begs is how to develop sustainable business processes.
Here are a few suggestions:
Implement energy-efficient technologies
Installing energy-efficient light bulbs, air conditioning units, and other appliances like microwaves and coffee machines in the kitchen, are an essential aspect of ensuring that your company contributes towards the reduction of greenhouse gasses by using less electricity.
Unfortunately, most of the world’s electricity is still generated by the use of fossil fuels. 2017 statistics show that 62.9% of the world electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. Unfortunately, this process releases carbon dioxide, and again 2017 statistics show that 27.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions are from electricity generation systems.
Embrace the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The advances in technologies like IoT, 3D printers, as well as Artificial Intelligence and machine learning can be utilized to reduce your company’s ecological footprint. A good example is that you can use the latest IoT technologies to connect all of the office lights, air conditioning, and other digital devices to a central hub.
The hub can be remotely controlled, lights can be switched off, and computers put into sleep mode. It will improve efficiencies and reduce the company’s carbon footprint.
Reduce paper wastage
Paper usage should certainly start becoming redundant in the twenty-first century. Efficient cloud storage with global access to the data stored in the cloud is a far more effective means of doing business.
It reduces the need to print documents and the need to carry large paper files around. It also prevents the scenario where the wrong documents are printed before a meeting. If everything is online, it’s a simple matter of accessing the correct records online, from anywhere in the world and at any time in 24 hours.