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15 Ethical Tips for Small Businesses

Posted: 23 February 2007

or “ethical ways of making your business or freelance life more eco-friendly” and save costs at the same time.

I thought I would compile a list, as the topic of ethical business has been in conversation recently with colleagues at the Brighton Farm and Vine Brighton.

I’m hoping my ideas will save you money, as well as making you become more aware of the resources you use, and the importance of our individual impact on our local and international ecosystems.

Here’s the list:

  1. use car pools, lift share and care sharing schemes
  2. use green transport to get around town > cycling, walking
  3. recycle old hardware (computers, monitors, scanner, leads, and printers)
  4. reuse printer cartridges by getting refills
  5. recycle/resell mobile phone handsets to charities or ebay respectively
  6. donate any miscellaneous business items to local charities > books, furniture
  7. only print on paper when required, send electronic copies instead
  8. using skype for conference calls rather than physical meetings
  9. shop locally for your lunch, try visiting your market
  10. using local businesses and freelancers for outsourcing work
  11. target working more for local businesses > offer incentives
  12. work from home office which is already energy efficient/optimised
  13. turn off all computer equipment at end of day – eg: monitors, and also when on vaction (over long periods) eg: wireless routers, plugs at sockets
  14. share office space with other colleagues > reducing energy bills (heating and electricity)
  15. working locally will also give you the chance to give something back to your community, like neighbourhood watch, and helping neighbours

If you have any more, I have left comments on, so go think of what you can do and leave your thoughts..

03/03/07 – and in the last few weeks: carbon neutral web hosting > rackspace and memset.

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  • http://www.arenaflowers.com/blog Will

    We’re switching to Rackspace for our hosting shortly…we were happy to see that they’re carbon neutral! If you look, there are loads of ways to tidy up round the edges and save both resources and prevent waste. Still, cycling to work is tough…takes me 45 mins. Solution? We’re trialling an electric van! Here’s hoping it does the trick!