Question: what is one way that you have made your business greener without investing a lot of your company´s money?
by The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC)
Move to the web
“My company sells B2B training programs, which are traditionally delivered via DVD or in-person workshops. Instead, we’ve taken the whole thing digital by providing users with a login that they can use to access all of their training videos online. We’re going green by not wasting a ton of resources manufacturing and shipping physical materials.”
– Laura Roeder | Founder, LKR
Try out DocuSing
“Running a business can involve a lot of paper. Sometimes, printing long documents seems unavoidable when something must be signed. However, services like DocuSign create legally recognized signatures through a process executed online. At the end of the process, you are provided with a PDF that can be saved and shared with all parties involved.”
– Kent Healy | The Uncommon Life
Save money with mugs!
“We found that having paper cups around encouraged people to use them once and throw them away, which cost lots of money and killed lots of trees. To stop the waste, we got each employee a personalized mug. Each person always knows which cup belongs to whom, and we no longer waste all the paper ones.”
– Vanessa Nornberg | President, Metal Mafia
Paperless is easy now
“In today’s technological climate, you can remove physical paper from nearly every element of running a business. Our contracts live in Contractually, our invoicing and correspondence is all online. The primary use we have for paper is for brainstorming/sketching, for which it’s easy to use scrap or recycled papers.”
– Derek Shanahan | Co-Founder, Foodtree
Leverage technology and pass it on
“We use EchoSign to reduce paper copies of contracts, Skype to have virtual meetings instead of in person meetings and Google Docs to store internal documents. With all of the waste reduced (using mostly free tools), we can afford to donate a little extra jingle to our favorite tree-growing foundations to boot.”
– Nathalie Lussier | Founder, CEO, Nathalie Lussier Media
Green solutions that save money
“Going green doesn’t mean spending a lot of money, it should actually save you money. Think simple and do things that reduce excess waste, both physically and monetarily. Encourage employees to bring their own lunches, assign each employee a reusable coffee mug, drinking glass and hand towel. Next time you have a company event, skip the beer cans and order a keg. Cleanup will be a breeze!”
– Matt Wilson | Co-founder, Under30CEO.com
We use rightsignature
“One way our business has “greenified” is by moving our legal review and signing processes to RightSignature, a powerful web and mobile app that makes it simple, seamless and secure to execute legal documents online. Our switch to digital legal docs has saved reams of paper for our company, with the added benefit of saving time. Goodbye, faxes and scans!”
– Doreen Bloch | CEO / Founder, Poshly Inc.
Empower your team to go green
“At the collaborative workspace I co-founded, we chose a location with a bus stop in front of it and lots of bike racks outside. We have a shower at the office for people to use when they bike in. We don’t offer people a parking space — which actually saves us a ton of money — and encourages them instead to bike or take public transportation. People love it and it is no expense to us.”
– Natalie MacNeil | Emmy Award Winning Producer & Entrepreneur, She Takes on the World
Be entirely virtual
“All of my employees work from home and we do most of our work in Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Essentially, our office is completely paperless — almost everything is done online or over conference calls, eliminating the need for printing and paper, among other things.”
– Heather Huhman | Founder & President, Come Recommended
Powered Green to offset laptops
“Buy carbon offsets from Powered Green for each laptop and server that your company uses. Powered Green will estimate how much energy you use in a year, then sell you an offset at a wind farm in the united states that will generate the same amount of energy your computers and servers are using. It’s easy, inexpensive and the right thing to do.”
– Nathan Lustig | cofounder, Entrustet
The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC recently published #FixYoungAmerica: How to Rebuild Our Economy and Put Young Americans Back to Work (for Good), a book of 30+ proven solutions to help end youth unemployment.
Photo credits
DocuSign.com / TheYec.org / TheYec.org / ComeRecommended.com
