Going through the process of trying to reduce the wastage in your business is a good start to making your business more environmentally friendly. However you will often quickly find just how difficult it can be to reduce what you are using as much as you would like.
So the question then comes to if you cannot reduce what you are using how can you minimize the impact of what you have to use. Well why not consider what you may be able to reuse. There are many things that can be put to good second time use or even more long term reuse. Let’s take a look at some examples.
- Scrap Paper – Often you will find that you have a lot of paper that often gets printed on or used in some way but on only one side. So rather then buying more notebooks or message pads, you can put the reverse side of this previously used paper to use as just that, notepaper.
- Shipping Boxes – Almost all businesses get products or items shipped to them in boxes at some time. These boxes can be easily reused for either storage, sending other products on to clients, or even given away to staff or other people that need them for the same purpose or some other reason.
- Equipment Upgrades – When you are upgrading equipment in the office, such as printers, furniture, computers, or anything else that may get upgraded, consider rather then throwing them away, giving them to staff or reusing them somewhere else in the business. Especially if they can be reused in the business then you are just throwing away money if you throw out upgraded products.
- Printer Cartridges – Depending on the type of cartridge and the model, there is often a possibility to reuse the cartridge by getting it refilled. This can help to reduce the wastage of buying a new printer cartridge each time the other is empty, while also saving you some money. Just be sure to use a reputable company to refill the cartridge and be aware that it can impact your warranty on your printer.
- Other things – If you look around your business you are likely to see more then a couple of things that you could potentially reuse. Taking the little bit of time to consider what you may be able to reuse, will quite potentially save you money in the long term, while it may sometimes take a little more time, there may be a good chance that one offsets the other.
So why not take a look around your office,shop, warehouse or workshop and see what you may be able to reuse, rather then just throwing away or replacing. You may be surprised at what you find.