Several recent studies have shown that adopting green technologies in your business can cut energy by as much as 80%. These 10 tips will definitely save your company money, help preserve the environment, and shift your business focus to a more sustainable level of operations.
1. Collect Data on Current Usage-In order to accurately measure whether your green efforts are working, you must first establish a baseline. Once you have measured your current energy use, you can develop improvement goals, then continue to monitor them.
2. Get a Free Energy Audit for Your Company-After establishing your current baseline, take advantage of a free energy audit. Energy audits are a great way to allow the experts to research your business and find those areas where consumption can be reduced and efficiencies enhanced. Many energy companies and some IT companies will perform these audits for free with no obligation. An assessment usually takes about an hour and you will be given a written report of your findings, and suggestions for improvement.
3. Encourage Telecommuting-Each week, give your employees at least one day to telecommute. This reduces office energy consumption, as well as carbon emissions from cars, and fuel consumption.
4. Share and Edit Documents Online-Move your document sharing, editing and collaboration efforts to a rich online environment like SharePoint, which will limit high paper consumption, lower ink use, reduce printer energy and help keep all of your documents easily manageable and accessible.
5. Use Laptops Whenever Possible-Laptops use a lot less energy than desktops and eliminate the need for using add-on monitors.
6. Use Software Tools with Uninterrupted Power Supplies-UPS tools can be used to effectively monitor energy use and supply.
7. Upgrade Equipment-Surprisingly, replacing your old energy wasting equipment with newer technologies requiring less power to run is one of the biggest ways to lower your energy costs.
8. Virtualize-Server and storage virtualization will both lower the amount of hardware needed and energy consumed by consolidating for efficiency. Virtualization has helped some companies reduce their energy costs by up to 90 percent.
Example:
20 servers X $500/year = $10,000/year
Consolidation of servers down to 4 using virtualization
4 servers X $500/year = 2,000/year
9. Use Teleconferencing or LiveMeeting Whenever Possible-These online meetings eliminate unnecessary travel, which can cost your company extra money and put added strain on the environment with extra flights, car rentals and hotel energy consumption.
10. Power Strips-Use them, and have your employees turn them off each night before they go home. Believe it or not, each turned off power strip can save over $150 per year in energy costs.
Recent changes to technology have made it easier than ever for small businesses to save money by adopting energy cutting solutions. Not only will you be helping to preserve energy and the environment; but you will also be reducing your overall operating expenses.