10 Tips for Reducing Your Company’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions

As a company, you care about your impact on the world, including your greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing them can help better the planet, but it can also have secondary implications for your business, like helping to keep or develop a reputation as a sustainable company. In addition, it can help you reduce costs, use less fuel, and help keep employees invested in the company because they know their employer is responsible and sustainable.  

Plus, those in the industrial and manufacturing sectors have a large role to play, as a relatively large percentage of our nation’s greenhouse emissions come directly from these industries. But office buildings and even retail can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions too. 

Here are ten tips for reducing your company’s greenhouse gas emissions. 

1. Reduce Your Consumption 

You may power appliances, HVAC units, and other equipment on your site. Where you can, cutting consumption is a powerful way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Sometimes this is as simple as replacing older, less efficient equipment with new models that burn significantly less energy. Sometimes it means assessing whether you really need to run this equipment and whether there are times you can turn it off in order to save; for example, once everyone has left for the day. 

2. Move Away from Coal 

Coal was once a very important fuel source, but our readily available access to natural gas has long made it less efficient and less effective. If you can move away from coal to natural gas, you’ll find that you can significantly reduce your emissions. In addition, natural gas burns much cleaner. 

3. Offer Flexible Scheduling 

Whenever an employee of yours is stuck in traffic, they produce more greenhouse gas emissions than they should. When you offer flexible scheduling for your employees, not only can they avoid the worst traffic for their area, but they can also make decisions like carpooling, taking a bus, or other methods of transportation that reduce their carbon footprint. You might even consider running a shuttle to get your employees to work if you have central locations.  

4. Choose Your Vendors 

When you assess which vendors you work with, do you also assess their sustainability as a company? You can help pressure other companies to make greener decisions by talking with your long-term vendors about changes they can make to lower their greenhouse gas emissions. Or you can choose new vendors who have already made an effort to reduce their emissions. 

5. Clean Up Your Supply Chain 

Inefficiencies in your supply chain may be one of the major ways you release more greenhouse gases than you need to. Implementing better tracking systems and investing in more efficient transportation equipment can help you reduce your emissions. Sometimes, investing in a fleet of more efficient gas-powered forklifts can make a big impact. For other companies, the supply chain is too small and efficient to cut; therefore, it will depend on your unique business. 

6. Recycle 

Creating something new for most products, materials, and tools is more energy-intensive than recycling the old. Where you can, you should choose raw materials that can be recycled, especially repeatedly. Materials like paper, tin, and more can be used multiple times by your organization or at least sent out to be recycled and used by someone else. Sometimes you can find a purpose even for materials that aren’t typically recycled. For example, old asphalt from shingles can be repurposed as road asphalt. Look into whether there are any new recycling options for the by-products you produce. 

You should also consider if you can use recycled products yourself. Even if you can’t incorporate recycled materials into your products, you can make smarter decisions like using recycled paper, adding recycled building materials to your new office location, or buying used office furniture. 

7. Keep Meetings and Events Online 

It isn’t always possible to allow remote work and hold meetings or company events online. Still, where it is, allowing employees to attend digitally saves time and energy spent commuting. The larger the business and the more often you can hold virtual events instead of in-person events, the bigger an impact you can have. This is also especially true if a portion of your workplace would normally fly on a commercial airline to attend a now-virtual event. 

8. Plant Trees 

Planting trees or supporting organizations that plant trees on your behalf can help create a carbon sink and offset the impact of the emissions that you can’t reduce. However, sometimes planting trees is more about mindset than the trees themselves. When you schedule a day to plant or a day to raise money to plant the trees, have staff consider how they can be more sustainable at work. Sometimes the best ways to reduce your carbon emissions as a company will come from your team if they are prompted to reflect on it. Planting trees can also be a great way to build morale and give staff an opportunity to reflect on their sustainability efforts. 

9. Reduce Your Waste 

As a company, what do you waste? It is generally best to avoid single-use items made using carbon emissions and then immediately thrown out. Avoiding single-use plastics, like plastic straws and water bottles, is a large sustainability trend right now and definitely one you should consider. But you can also reduce your waste in other ways. One important option is to avoid obsolescence in electronics and other equipment. Instead, try to purchase the things that will last the longest. 

10. Use Smarter Gas Compression 

If you work in oil and gas, then you may think there isn’t much you can do—however, that’s simply not true. Upgrading with 24/7 Compression can help you reduce your carbon footprint and help your company become significantly more sustainable. Reach out to our team to discuss how we can help you cut down on gas emissions today.