“Sustainability and”: A thoughtful approach to greening your small business

If your business is trying to improve its sustainable efforts, but you feel stuck — you’re not alone! It can be hard to know what steps you can take towards greening your business will actually matter in the long run. The sheer volume of potential tactics can be overwhelming, from recycling to commute trip reduction to carbon offsets to fossil fuel divestment. Before you get so overwhelmed that you quit trying — there’s another approach that can both reduce your environmental impact and your connections in your community. I like to call this concept “sustainability and.” Simply, what steps can you take that reduce your environmental impact and make an impact in another area you value?

THOUGHTFUL CONSUMPTION = LOCAL ECONOMIC BOOST

For example, buying local can reduce your carbon footprint, and it also boosts the local economy. Evaluate your buying ‘web’ — places and people you buy from (or pay, in the case of outsourcing.) Are there tweaks you can make, shifting to a green or local business (or better yet, a green, local business!)

Another way to reduce waste is to look critically about the waste you generate. I’m not talking about sandwich wrappers or bits of plastic here and there. I’m talking about things you frequently receive and toss out, like used but useable padded envelopes. If you receive a lot of envelopes, you can set them aside and then give them to another local business who can use them to send packages. This reduces your waste stream, costs no money, and reduces costs for the other local business. Plus, this exercise gets people into the mindset of reuse — which is one of the best tactics we have in reducing waste and consumption. Don’t know who to gift it to? Consider your local Freecycle, Buy Nothing, or Green Bee group. You might also be lucky enough to have a creative reuse store (e.g. donated materials + craft items), a Free Store, or a swap shop at your local dump. You can gift the items to a new business each time you collect a boxful, or create an ongoing relationship with a local business. Other items that can be stored until you have a boxful: bubble wrap, air packs, brown paper, tissue paper, packing peanuts, shredded paper (which can be used for packing), plastic bags, reusable shopping bags past their prime (I drop off donations with mine), egg cartons (your local food bank might want them), Styrofoam, gift bags, markers (Crayola will recycle them!) and glass bottles with lids.

Clearly label trash and recycling (you can even share what items turn into when recycled — which increases participation). Compost if you can — if you feel like you can’t on a regular basis, check with the venues you use for meetings and conferences and see if they are set up to collect and dispose of compost. Discourage employees from printing (get recycled paper if you can!)

CHOICE ARCHITECTURE = REDUCED CARBON

If you want to make a splash (and an impact), consider serving vegan food at your next company party, meeting, or conference, even if you’re not vegan! Your preferred actions/options, like vegan food or paperless billing can be set up for your customers/attendees as the default option — forcing people opt out rather than opt in. This is called “choice architecture” and boils down to how we respond to options given to us. Studies that show if you leave “vegan” or “vegetarian” as the default option for an event or even school lunch, the majority of attendees will eat vegan/vegetarian. If the default is meat, the majority will eat meat. It might feel a bit odd to try to nudge your attendees towards veganism, but it’s important to note that if the default (or only option) is a meat based meal, that’s a nudge as well. In some places, finding a dedicated vegan caterer can be challenging, but I’ve successfully worked with non-vegan caterers to create a robust “harvest salad” that was vegan, gluten free, and delicious! Risottos, tacos, enchiladas, pasta dishes, soups, and stir frys can easily be made vegan or vegetarian. Full disclosure: I’m not vegan. But I feel like this is an easy choice when I’m planning events — and I’ve been able to maintain and even reduce food costs when serving vegan.

If you regularly stock stacks and drinks at your office, buy a Brita pitcher and cute vintage glasses instead of bottled water. Serve filtered water to your guests. Keep a little stash of fruits and easy to eat veggies (carrots, mini cucumbers, little peppers, cherry tomatoes) at the office instead of single serve chips or granola bars. Purchase secondhand silverware and discourage single serve plastic use. If you want to go the extra mile, you could even have an office Tupperware stash that employees could take with them when they order take-out or get salad bar (soon “tare” will be your new favorite word.) Stock cloth napkins and tea towels in your staff kitchen and offer them at lunch meetings. (Yes, someone will have to wash them, so it’s helpful to get into a pattern, e.g. bringing work linens home on Friday, doing a load and bringing them back Monday. I pick up great matching sets at my local thrift store on sale days.)

If you’re hosting a meeting or event, include transit information in your reminder email (nearby stops, routes, or a link to a Google map with transit times). Highlight walking, biking, and rideshare options for your employees and visitors. You can even include an image of the bike rack or transit stop — this type of “wayfinding” can positively impact behavioral change in your employees and customers.

INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISM = BETTER OUTCOMES

You might be thinking, “what does sustainability have to do with intersectional feminism?” Actually — a lot. At its most basic, intersectional feminism refers to the reality that many women are facing discrimination on more than one level, e.g. being a woman of color (dealing with both gender based discrimination as well as racism) or an LGBTQ woman (who faces gender discrimination and homophobia), or a trans woman (who faces gender based discrimination as well as transphobia). If this seems like a merely academic distinction — it is not. White women in the United States earn $0.77 compared to a every dollar a white man earns; black women earn $0.66, Native American women earch $0.58, Latina women earn $0.53. To put an even finer point on it, trans women are 4x more likely to be murdered than women in general (in addition to higher rates of unemployment and homelessness for transgender women.)

Climate change impacts women at a higher rate than men, and there’s even anecdotal reporting that women may have a lower survival rate after catastrophic weather events (e.g. hurricanes.) If we are interested in making our businesses more “green,” we can’t ignore the reality that women — and especially women of color — are bearing the burden of climate change. When we’re formulating our green business tactics — keep this in mind. When you’re shifting you buying to local, can you find a local business owned by a woman of color? Many cities have Facebook groups or web pages with list of businesses owned by people of color. If you think about your business purchasing — who are you buying from? This is a shift that might require some research but it’s worthwhile and effective. Other areas to support women of color: when you’re looking for new employees, outsourcing, looking for venues, hiring a caterer, getting new headshots, sponsoring local events. I encourage you to think of the network of purchase you make — of goods, services and spaces — and see where you can make a shift to support your own community, especially women of color.

Be vocal, act local, and get political. Conventional wisdom says to hide your values and opinions from your customers. F**k that. Consumers are looking to businesses to be leaders on sustainability, they are expecting it and even demanding it. Be that leader — don’t be shy. Share your successes, your challenges, ask for recommendations of businesses to patron and books to read. Can you get certified as a green business without tackling this aspect? Sure. But you’re missing a huge part of the picture — a worthwhile, deep seated, impactful part.

SUSTAINABILITY AND YOUR BUSINESS

Rather than being overwhelmed by the variety of potential greening tactics your business can take, think instead about how you’d fill in the blank: “Both sustainability and _____________ are important to me — and I can make changes in my business that impact both.” Your “sustainability and” value could be sustainability and intersectionality; sustainability and leadership; sustainability and personal consumption; sustainability and local community? Finding this can help you create a sustainability strategy at your business that’s deeply and visibly impactful. What’s your and?

This article was previously published on Medium.com in Nov 2019.