Business Trends: The Future Looks Green
Presently, businesses all over the world are focused on the development of sustainable and eco-friendly supply chains that can be built not only to support themselves, but can also actively improve the environment. Scientists are working to make sure green energy supply chains are environmentally friendly, while also being able to eliminate waste within the supply chain. Once this process is refined and is able to be rolled out to multinational industries, businesses will be able to uncover new opportunities to reduce costs.
Another focus for businesses looking to invest in a sustainable green supply chain is ‘entire system thinking’ verses ‘component level thinking’. This is the concept of getting the lowest price on a component and disregarding the costs to the system brought on by this component. In most businesses, ‘component level thinking’ is the default, however if companies focused on the overall costs of a component, it might make more sense to buy high quality components that would reduce system cost.
Many organisations fail to effectively measure the cost of each component within their green system, and thus struggle to apply their costings through the rest of the supply chain. In order to combat this, businesses have employing a two pronged approach to their green processes. Firstly, they more their existing system processes to the sustainable green supply chain model, and secondly design new processes with sustainability in mind instead of current application.
Cutting Energy Use and Waste
Companies all over the world are always looking for the business energy solutions and innovative ways to cut their carbon emissions, but sometimes the solution isn’t complicated at all. As fossil fuels go up in price, followed by taxes on landfill sites, companies are doing everything they can to change how they use energy and dispose of their waste to improve their bottom line.
Improving Reputation
Companies have also been able to save money from the reputation benefits of green behaviour beyond the direct savings of cutting energy, water and waste. As a brand can play a huge part in a company’s success, businesses invest millions of pounds every year on market research looking to find out what products their customers need.
Over the last few years, businesses have been making consumers aware how their purchases affect the environment, and consumers in turn have been looking to businesses to see how they are protecting the environment. Businesses are seeing financial and reputational damage the more they continue irresponsible business practices, so smart sourcing plays a large role in the social success of a company.
Investing
Going green includes making socially responsible investments, and not just cutting back on waste – investing in smart technology alternatives that makes the eco transition that little bit smoother is all the rage. For example, in order to reduce the impact of travelling to meetings, companies have been investing in better communications technology to facilitate conference calls. Many industries all over the world have seen a variety of benefits that stem directly from weaving environmentally-friendly practices into their business model, and by insisting on change, consumers have also played a big part in changing the way businesses affect the environment.
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