smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

There are a huge number of ways to make your business more energy efficient, but a good place to start is to calculate your company’s carbon footprint. There are a number of sites on the internet that simplify the process, including www.btplc.com/climatechange.

A simple way to begin to make your business more energy efficient is to ensure that all equipment that can be turned off is turned off when not in use, whether that be lights, computers or televisions.

Moving on from that, there are lots of other ways you can reduce your impact on the environment. On a different scale, I know, but if you take BT as an example, some of the things we’re doing are equally applicable to companies of all sizes.

As a company, we’re continually examining every aspect of our business and supply chain to find areas where we can be more energy efficient. This includes an audit of our energy consumption, where we’re currently using green and evaluating 100 per cent renewable energy across the business.

We are also reducing emissions from our vehicle fleet and cutting travel emissions through a greater use of technology. At the heart of this is audio and video conferencing, which currently saves us more than 860,000 face-to-face meetings every year, equating to a reduction of more than 97,000 tonnes of CO2 into the environment.