Top Tips for Retailers:
- Carry out a simple impact assessment on your business.
You need to have a clear understanding of what impacts your business operations and what activities have on the environment and your local community. A good place to start is by doing an audit of environmental and social impacts across the whole of your business. - Speak to your local schools about what is important to them.
- Take action from the insights gained from the assessment, aligning with the 3Rs of sustainability – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Take action from the insights gained from the assessment, aligning with the 3Rs of sustainability – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The first priority here is always focused on ‘reduce’ so think about:
- What can I reduce or remove completely? E.g. energy consumption or consumables such as paper and plastic packaging.
- Where can I reuse materials? E.g. carton packaging.
- What can I recycle? E.g. plastic, carton, food waste.
- Use wholesalers that have lots of sustainable products & eco credentials!
- Measure and record what you are doing – as what gets measured gets done!
Start by taking monthly meter readings for electricity and heating. Also record your business travel mileages, type of fuel/consumption, water and sewerage as well as a record of waste collected. - Set yourself 3-5 key goals that are realistic and achievable.
Taking small steps and actions really do make a difference. - Engage and involve colleagues in every step of the journey. Engage colleagues every step of the way depending on the size of your business. If you can set up a green task force then great, but at the very least have someone designated as the sustainability lead to support driving the change. Just one simple idea from a colleague could be a real game changer for your business.
- Finally, enjoy the journey and share what you are doing with us. If you have any questions about measuring your carbon footprint, then don’t hesitate to contact SER@banner.co.uk.