Nowadays, sustainability has increasingly become more paramount for B2B businesses than ever before. Therefore, your company must reduce its carbon footprint across its business operations, notes Forbes. In other words, sustainability should infiltrate each aspect of your company, including your B2B marketing techniques.
As a business owner, you may imagine embracing sustainability comes with huge cost implications, but this isn’t entirely true. In any case, the overall cost implications of not embracing sustainability outweigh the cost of implementing sustainable B2B strategies.
Here are cost-effective ways you can adopt sustainability as a B2B company.
1. Use Energy Efficiently
Electricity is a crucial component for any business, whether a B2C or a B-2-B company. Electricity allows your workplace to be air-conditioned to create a suitable environment for working and appliances to run, among other key functions. So, how can you ensure sustainability while using electricity to run your B2B company?
Using energy efficiently is easy. For instance, you can ensure that your air conditioning system is switched off once the workplace is conditioned. Also, you can achieve energy efficiency and sustainability by encouraging your staff to switch off lights, computers, and other gadgets when closing work for the day.
Furthermore, your B2B company can leverage energy efficiency and demand management techniques, by participating in automated demand response programs. That way, your company will establish the most impactful load reduction in support of your company’s sustainability objectives. Implementing such measures will reduce your B2B company’s carbon footprint and energy costs.
2. Purchase Services from Eco-friendly Companies
If your B2B business is buying from and promoting unsustainable companies, then your organization is as much the cause of the problem as them. Therefore, one of the ways your B2B firm can embrace sustainability is by purchasing energy from power companies that use renewable energy sources. In this manner, you’ll promote companies that embrace sustainability.
3. Adopt Remote Working When Possible
Does your B2B company have tasks that your employees can complete from home? If so, take advantage of that as one way of embracing sustainability in your business. Fortunately, cloud computing has made it possible and easy for remote workers to finish tasks without having to travel to and fro work daily.
Having some employees working from home for two or three days each week helps reduce your company’s carbon footprint from frequent trips to and fro work. In addition, this means less energy is used on air conditioning, lighting, and office heating. Ultimately, these strategies will help your organization embrace sustainability.
4. Develop a Policy to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
Another excellent way for your B2B company to embrace sustainability is by developing a policy for reducing the use of environmentally unfriendly materials. Likewise, the policy should clearly outline how reusable and recyclable materials can be reused and recycled accordingly.
At the same time, your B2B company should go paperless by shifting to fully online-based operations wherever you can. If the type of business you run, going paperless isn’t viable – strive to purchase and use recyclable paper throughout your company. Research indicates that over 94% of waste in an ideal business bin is recyclable. Therefore, developing a waste recycling program is the perfect way to cement your B2B company’s commitment to sustainability.
5. Adopt Environmental-friendly Packaging and Shipping Practices
Embracing eco-friendly packaging and shipping is one of the most effective ways for your B2B company to lower its environmental impact. Some packaging and shipping practices your company should embrace include:
- Selecting recyclable and sustainable packaging materials.
- Leveraging email-only receipts and paperless invoicing to reduce paper waste.
- Always try as much as possible to ship products in bulk
- Motivate your clients to reuse or return any product containers (You can offer clients incentives, including discounts or rewards to motivate them).
Take Away
Sustainability is an aspect that requires the collective effort of all business enterprises. Lowering the waste going into the environment should be a top priority for your B2B company to create a more sustainable business environment. A few ways your B2B company can embrace sustainability include buying services from sustainable companies, using energy efficiently, and adopting remote working to reduce the carbon footprint of your staff. Furthermore, your organization can adopt environmental-friendly packaging and shipping practices and develop a policy to reduce, reuse, and recycle waste materials.
