As is often the case when you have finished being part of a presentation, you reflect on what you have said, and very often you wish you had said more or mentioned other things.
This is true of my recent Q&A presentation at the Autotrader Sustainability Hub meeting.
One question particularly stands out in my mind, where I wish I had said a lot more, and that was when I was asked:
“Have the green measures you’ve implemented cost you more or saved money”
In response to this I don’t think I fully and fairly represented the fact that a lot of green measures can actually save businesses, and households, money.
I think I omitted so much here because at Drive Green, if there is a greener way to do something we just do it, irrespective of costs or savings. And I think as a result I haven’t reflected enough on the fact that many of the measures we have implemented have actually saved us money.
On further reflection, I realise how important this is to your average business, (and average household,) for whom a financial justification is often required – to be greener for businesses. and for the masses is often not enough on its own.
The good news is that it is possible to implement a lot of green measures that do in fact save businesses money as well. With this being the case, it makes sense that all businesses can at the minimum do many things, as they can be fully justified to the person holding the purse strings.
The following is a list of some of the measures we have implemented at Drive Green, that are saving us money. Whilst some are more relevant to businesses, and particularly those in the motor trade, there are also examples here relevant to everyone domestically.
With the cost of energy being so high there is plenty of money to be saved by producing your own green energy from a solar array mounted at your business (or on your home). We have a very visible solar pv system on site that we use not only to power the office and charge a car, but also to provide a very real example to our customers of how they can harness solar power at their homes to the same aim.
Insulation will cut heating costs and with the price of energy being so high this will also save money. At Drive Green we have made our office hyper-insulated, by using the recycled wall panels of old scrap fridge trucks, as well as waste Insulation panels from the Bristol Airport rebuild, to insulate all our walls and floor.
Heat Pumps (powered by green energy) are the go-to green heating system, particularly if you have a highly insulated office (or home). They save carbon emissions and if you have a properly designed system in a well-insulated building they will also save you money.
Biomass (typically wood chip or wood pellet boilers) heating is also a greener carbon-neutral heating solution that will suit buildings where insulation is less optimal, or conversion budgets are tighter.
At Drive Green we have both a heat pump and biomass heating systems, which are great for customer demonstrations, and keep our office toasty warm, at a truly minimal cost as our building is so well insulated.
Buying used furniture saves waste and the carbon cost of newly manufactured items, but also saves loads of money.
We have recently put in some new metal cupboards and some replacement office chairs, and these were a quarter of the cost of what they were new. They are also great quality so they should not need replacing for a very long time.
Increasingly thanks to digital platforms it is very easy to get almost anything you need second hand, so please do buy used and save some money at the same time.
Really this is just relevant to the motor trade, but replacing plastic car window displays and lots of bits of paper with repeat use digital car window displays is saving a lot of waste, and whilst there is a greater financial cost to these displays, they are saving loads of money in staff labour.
We are trying wherever possible to make sure our EVs are delivered without the use of Deisel car transporters. This takes more effort and planning, but we have cut the carbon cost of our deliveries by over 50% in the last 9 months, but also at the same time we have actually saved thousands of pounds.
If you are getting an EV delivered get it driven delivered as it will save lots of money as EVs have such a low cost per mile.
Disposable cups might be convenient, but they are totally unnecessary, and just using normal mugs and glasses will save a lot of waste, and the cost of paper or plastic cups. There should be no place for any single-use items in a green business. Using mugs from environmental charities will help promote them to customers as well, for a double win.
We were so lucky to have been able to build our offices and site entirely from waste or reclaimed materials, as we were building from scratch. But I know this isn’t necessarily going to be possible for the average business. In my presentation, I did definitely draw reference to a lot of the materials we have used being more expensive (reclaimed timber, handmade nails for example.) However a lot of the materials were much cheaper, and there is a big difference between reclaimed (expensive) and waste/recycled (cheap). A good example is our glazing. Miss-made and broken at the back of a glazier’s yard, we were lucky enough to buy a 40ft run of full-height glazing for a 1/10th of what it would otherwise have cost.
Whilst there are definitely green steps that will cost a business more, on reflection, most of the things we have done and the measures we have in place are actually saving us money.
As a result hopefully all businesses can financially justify implementing lots of similar green measures. In turn hopefully, this will help lead to a more sustainable future.
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