A recent survey demonstrated a large amount of small and medium sized business are not taking the opportunity to cut costs and engage staff by going green. The Netregs report (http://bit.ly/9vmUk1) shows that the majority of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) haven’t realised what they are missing out on.
Environment Champions or Green Teams are often seen as excellent low cost method of motivating staff to take significant carbon & cost cutting action. According to the survey, only 7% of businesses had taken this easy step to engage employees environmentally.
A surprisingly low 11% of the businesses surveyed had carried out a programme of environmental improvements and just 18% had assessed the impact their business has on the environment. A slightly more heartening number (28%) have made energy cuts, but this is still very low when you consider the impact that electric and gas bills have on the bottom line.
An Environmental Management System (EMS) can really help a company boost its bottom line by focusing on the many eco-cost savings available. Furthermore with many large public and corporate organizations requiring proof of your environmental credentials, attaining an EMS such as ISO14001 can make all the difference. Unfortunately a majority of the SME’s considered an to be of "no use" or of "little use" with only four percent of the businesses surveyed having one, although a quarter did have an environmental policy.
However it wasn’t all bad news, as the ‘Reduce, Re-use, Recycle’ message is starting to get through. The survey found that environmental awareness increased with the size of the business and overall, 84% of SMEs are recycling and 41% have cut down their waste.
PeopleProfitPlanet works with your organisation to enable you to take all of the opportunities available to boost staff morale, bottom line and green credentials. We offer programmes which can work to develop your environmental policy into a document that makes sense to your staff and finance director, for example working with your Green Champions or helping develop your EMS.
As this survey shows, many organisations need some help!
