This article has been excerpted from 101 Ways to Turn Your Business Green by Rich Mintzer, available from EntrepreneurPress.
The key to going greener is thinking greener, and today many people are already in the environmentally responsible mind-set. It may be easier than you think to get everyone in your company onboard. Just as every diet needs to begin with a healthy meal plan, your plan to go green should also start off with a few of these basics:
#3 Start With an Energy Audit
One of the first steps toward becoming greener is to determine exactly how much energy you are using now and at what cost. You can start with a simple energy audit. To begin, you will want to review your own energy expenditure and measure it on an ongoing basis by reading your energy bills and meters.
Then, as your business grows and expands, you will be able to account for the additional energy consumption and measure the increase by additional units of production or by additional hours. This way you can see if you are maintaining a stable amount of energy use in conjunction with your growth.
Of course, you will also want to compare your energy use with the needs of similar businesses. This will take some research, but will provide a benchmark, so you will know what a business of your size (and type) should be using in your geographic location.
An energy audit will result in a report that lists your energy expenses and charts those numbers over time.
The next step is to reconcile your theoretical energy consumption with that shown on your actual energy bills. After analyzing your specific needs and use of lighting, heating, air conditioning, machinery and office equipment (including computers) to determine energy efficiency, you can seek lower-cost solutions, as well as change bad habits and adopt new company-wide business policies to decrease your energy output.
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