Whatever Your Branding, It Could Use More Green

Just in case you weren’t aware… It’s no longer the ‘80s. Lots of consumers today don’t know who Gordon Gekko is, nobody considers greed a virtue and few things are more toxic to your branding than chasing a profit for profit’s sake. In an age where a business can be brought to its knees by its consumers due to the transparency and interconnectivity of the social media age, our customers have a certain expectation of us. It’s not enough for us to succeed. We have to succeed while keeping a strong ethical focus at the heart of everything we do.

Putting some green into your branding

Your brand is important to you. It’s what sets you aside from your competitors and lends your business a sense of personality and character. As great as your products and services are, your branding is what customers fall in love with. It stands as a seal of quality and reliability, and your customers come back to you time after time because they know what to expect from your brand. But virtually any brand can be improved by incorporating a strong ethical focus, especially when it comes to the environment. Sure, in a post-crisis economy people want to save money, but they also want to ensure that they’re supporting businesses with sustainable and environmentally conscious processes.

Here I’ll look at some easy to adopt practices that will help to make your business greener. Don’t hide them under a bushel either, put them front and centre on your website and your social media feed.

Don’t let your waste be a wasted opportunity

One of the easiest ways for businesses to make a difference to the environment is by handling their office waste more responsibly. This means not only recycling wherever possible and cutting down on creating trash where objects can be repurposed and reused, it also means getting an eco-friendly company to remove your office waste. Read more about office junk at Dirt Cheap Rubbish Removal. Responsible handling of office waste, especially highly toxic electronic waste like old computers, calculators and printers is a huge step towards associating your brand with environmental responsibility.  

Make a shift towards sustainable raw materials

If your business has a manufacturing component to it, whether light or heavy, you can raise your profile significantly by using more sustainable raw materials not only in your products but in your packaging. Just look at how the food giant Nestle (a brand that’s historically had some PR issues in the past) has boosted its profile by vowing to move to completely reusable or recyclable packaging by 2025.  

Never recycle when you can repurpose

Recycling is certainly better than contributing to the problem of landfill waste, but it’s not as sustainable a practice as many of us think it is. For example, did you know that most plastics can only be recycled once? Try to find creative ways of repurposing waste wherever you can, like the way McDonald’s uses biodiesel made from old cooking oil to fuel its delivery trucks.

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