Office Practice
Remember that local is better - it involves less transport and therefore less energy consumption and carbon production.
Purchasing
As a business, you have significant buying power.
Use the questions below to evaluate the products that you purchase and think about how you could use your buying power to help sustain the environment.
- Do you really need to buy this item?
- Could you get this product or service locally?
- Is it made locally as well as supplied locally?
- If the product cannot be made locally then have you chosen the best alternative e.g. Fairtrade tea or coffee?
- Does the product have minimum packaging?
- Could it be bought in bulk to reduce packaging?
- Can the packaging be recycled, re-used, returned or will it biodegrade?
- Does the product have the lowest energy running requirements?
- Is the product recycled or from a sustainable source?
- Is there an environmentally friendly version of the product that you could purchase?
- Does the producer have an ethical and green approach to production?
- Does the product supplier have an energy policy? Do they use renewable energy?
Case Study: Explore
John Telfer of Explore says ‘One of the most important factors to consider when we are choosing suppliers is how local they are. First of all this helps us to create local community benefits and secondly it reduces our carbon footprint. Recently we switched to fair trade food products using a local company – this also has the added benefit of being a visible commitment to our sustainable tourism policy with staff’.