Today, many businesses are struggling to keep costs under control. With such concerns, many business owners are not giving much thought to what they can do to save energy and lessen their carbon footprint. However, what they should know is that many of the same steps that can slash energy use in a business can also help to slash costs over time. Below are six examples.
Swap Out Your Light Bulbs and Light Tubes
If you are still using traditional incandescent light bulbs and fluorescent light tubes in your offices, factories, and other facilities, you are making a mistake. Instead, you should be switching over to LED light bulbs and light tubes. LEDs provide the same amount of light but require far less energy to run. According to the US Department of Energy, LED bulbs can use up to 75 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs. They also tend to last a long longer as well since they don’t run as hot as incandescent bulbs. You’ll be saving energy and also slashing costs in regards to bulb replacement overtime as well.
Update Your Ethernet Cables
In regards to information technology, you should also be aware of the fact that the standards of Ethernet cables have been upgraded. Most businesses would be wise to adopt these new standards. For one, they provide higher bandwidth with an increase from 10-gigabyte interfaces to 25 gigabytes. This is the case for QSFP28 to SFP28 cables. The difference between the two is that QSFP28 is the quad form of the SFP28 that provides four different 25-gigabyte lanes of data transfer instead of just one. Better yet, both consume far less power than previous cable designs. You can especially get your bang for your buck with the QSFP28 since its efficiency is effectively quadrupled.
Bring In the Sun
One thing that is free is the sunlight. You should take advantage of this fact by making sure large windows facing the sun are in place in employee office space and other work areas. This will produce multiple benefits. It will lessen the need for as much artificial light. It will also help keep employees warmer during the workday. Combined, this will lessen your energy consumption during the day. Natural sunlight can also help fight depression and improve employee morale. They may feel better and be more productive than if they were stuck in a dungeon-like space with no natural light at all.
Perform an Energy Audit
Those working in a business should be prepared for audits. However, one audit your workplace may have not gone through yet is an energy audit. An energy audit occurs when an independent third party comes to a workplace and assesses how the business is using energy and conceivably loses energy efficiency. A report will then be produced with recommendations on what changes to make to increase energy efficiency in the workplace. These recommendations will likely lower your company’s carbon footprint and slash costs at the same time.
Unplug Equipment
Some equipment, like computer servers, should not be unplugged in certain cases. However, there’s no reason why your copy machine should be plugged into a wall socket at 4 AM when there’s no one in the office. Things like office appliances, computers, monitors, televisions, and more are what we call “energy vampires.” This means they keep using electricity even when they are switched off as long as they are plugged into an outlet. Unplugging these devices at the end of the workday requires minimal effort and will result in big energy cost savings over a month.
Upgrade to Energy Efficient Equipment
Office equipment and other kinds of business equipment are not designed to last forever. At some point, you’re going to need to replace things like printers, fax machines, and more. This presents you with an excellent opportunity to lower your energy consumption. Look for equipment, appliances, and other devices that are marked with the Energy Star label. This ensures that those devices were approved by the government as having been designed with energy consumption in mind and saving much more electricity than their counterparts without the Energy Star label.
Thankfully, many efforts to lower energy consumption within a business will also result in significant cost savings. Slashing energy use often increases efficiency as well. The entire company will benefit from a more eco-friendly mindset.
