5 WAYS TO TAKE CARE OF OUR PLANET WHILST RUNNING A SMALL BUSINESS: EARTH DAY EDITION

Sustainability is more important than ever, and as we head toward Earth Day, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on our own sustainability efforts. In this post, we’ll be sharing tips with our fellow small biz owners to look after our planet, whilst running your own business. 

Why is sustainability so important to us?

Running a small business means using up a lot more resources, so it’s important to us to be able to balance this and work towards becoming climate positive. We feel strongly that it is our responsibility as humans to look after our planet and not contribute towards its destruction. With this in mind, it’s a no-brainer that sustainability is important to us, as it should be to everyone. 

What do we do to work towards being climate positive?

There are several ways we’ve developed our business to work towards a climate-positive future. 

We work with Ecologi by using part of our profits to help fund the world's best climate crisis solutions. There are different projects funded monthly, including peatland restoration, reforestation, wind energy, biomass energy, and more. This partnership is helping us reduce each team member’s carbon footprint, which is something you can do too as a business or individual.

By working with Ecologi, we are able to plant an additional tree on our customer’s behalf with every order placed through our website. This tree is planted by Ecologi and Eden Reforestation Projects in the Paper and Word Forest. 

We also use compostable packing in all of our sleeve orders and once the address label is cut off, they can be thrown straight into compost or food waste bins at home. All of our packaging is also reusable, which we think is so important!

How can small businesses take care of our planet and be more sustainable?

1. Obviously, we’re a big fan of Ecologi, and signing up to work with them is a great first step in committing to make a difference with your business. Signing up gives you guides to setting sustainable goals, offsetting your team's carbon footprint, planting trees and funding climate projects. 

2. If you’re selling products, consider the materials you use to make the products themselves. At the end of the product’s life, what is the impact of the waste and how environmentally friendly will it be? Is there a reuse factor in what you create? If not, how can you make sure it is correctly disposed of? 

3. Again if you’re selling an actual product, think about how this is packaged, is the packaging recyclable and are you telling your customers that in some way so they are more encouraged to recycle it when finished with the packaging? 

4. Switching to a renewable energy supplier can not only be good for the planet but could also save you money. It’s well worth looking into this option as one thing small businesses all have in common is their need for energy to operate. 

5. Depending on your needs as a business, look into buying upcycled equipment when upgrading your kit. There is so much waste from office equipment to tech, so consider secondhand options when right for your business. 

As you can probably tell, we feel strongly about being a sustainable small business, and we hope we’ve helped you with some tips here too. Our parting line for anyone considering going down this journey is this; it’s really easy to make the right choice as a small business, it can be more expensive, but it is the right choice. If you’re reading this post, you already know how important this is, so we’d say, just do it.

If your business is new, don't even consider any other options, just find the most sustainable option for every aspect as you go. Every supply, every bit of packaging, every choice you make. Or if you're established, next time you need to restock on something, just find a better sustainable option and change to that going forward. It's really easy to do, you just need to commit to starting. Of course, not every option works for everyone and that’s okay, but knowing you’re putting the work in and finding what works for you and your business is so important. 

We’d love to hear any more of your sustainability tips down below, whether it’s for work or home. 

• The Paper and Word Team •