Share what you know with millions of people
Focus is the best place to turn what you know into remarkable content
0
How do you attempt to keep your small business utility bills down?
Events
- Dos and Don'ts of Small Business Marketing May 29 @ 11 am PT
- Lead Nurturing 202: The Next Generation May 31 @ 11 am PT
- The Tricks to Paid Media June 6 @ 11 am PT
- Display Advertising for Brand Awareness June 20 @ 11 am PT
Related Activity
9 Answers
Take advantage of energy-saving programs: contact your energy provider and ask if there are any discounts/incentives for making energy-saving changes to your business; have an energy-efficiency consultant/city-utility consultant come in to audit your workspace to identify ways to reduce utility consumption in your workspace and to qualify for any government-backed incentives.
Go paperless: Maximize email communication (i.e. switch to e-fax, email invoices, scan and email documents to business partners); reducing the number of tasks that require paper and transferring them to email will lower the number of machines that are used therefore lower energy use.
Re-evaluate your workspace: consider sharing office space with another company, maybe one that shares complimentary services; consider work share environments (for reference http://www.coloft.com or http://www.workingvillage.com); switch to energy saving light bulbs and/or energy saving computer monitors; in select rooms within your workspace, switch to motion-sensor lights.
Here's a very short simple effective method in addition to Victoria's very thoughtful answer:
How bout simply being a smarter consumer. Turning off lights, computers, copiers etc when not needed (especially at night) conserves energy and will in itself save money.
The suggestion here are great and all boil down to being mindful and operating as a conscious business owner. (You'd be surprised at how many operate unconsciously! LOL). Know your investment in your utilities at the start so you can track your savings by turning out lights, recycling, reducing peak energy work hours, being flexible on employees working from home, leverage technology to go paperless and save on networking (cloud computing.) A million and one small ways will add up to real savings.
How about encouraging your employees to work from home?
The cost of running an office could be dramatically reduced if there were no need for that office to be there!
We are sending SMS on every monday TIPS on Green Environment ex Use Less Paper, Car Polling, Swich off Lights, PC's when not in use & many more.
This has helped a lot.
There are many ways to help reduce expenses some already mentioned...not let’s look at some of the best.
Billing Optimization service providers can ensure you don't spend more than you need to on your biggest bills: energy, telephone, internet, faxing and cellular (voice and data). This can make significant impact on your bottom line, often times by over 25% reduction of expenditures in these categories.
Also, hosted VoIP (telephone systems) and some cloud based services can drastically improve your bottom line efficiency with little to no upfront costs. A simple analysis of your bills, needs and desires can truly impact your spend, while enabling you to do more than you may have been able to do in the past.
We all know that saving money on energy bills is as simple as changing employee habits from carelessly leaving on lights, computers, printers etc to thoughtfully powering them down. We also know that changing other's habits is more difficult than changing a printer cartridge!
The solution: SENSORS. Lighting, HVAC and IT appliances can all be made more efficient with simple and inexpensive sensors that detect when devices are needed and supply them with energy accordingly. Changing habits is a hard. Changing switches to sensors is easy...and green...and cost-effective.
Saving energy begins with analysis of your costs to see what you are paying and for what services. For most business, the major costs are gas/oil for heating, electricity for most other needs including air conditionining. For most business, the greatest cost will be for heating and cooling depending on their climate. This is the place to start.
Look at your utility's rate structure and make sure you understand any time of day elements. For example, your electricity cost may be quite high in the middle to end of the day (when AC is needed most) and the rate drops in the evening. This provides opportunity to save by taking steps to raise interior temperatures while moving other power using operations to the evening or night. In winter, heat costs may seem hard to control, but by turning down thermostadts at night and working with landlords on better insulation for your building may save considerable costs. If you are not open on weekends, then heat and AC should be turned off or down.
It may be hard to completely turn off all power using gadgets, but your monitors and computer should be set such that after a period of time, using the power management function, they go to sleep and use less power. This can be set to occur following the time that any automated backup has finished. Lights can be on timers that turn the lights off when a room is not being used. These can be quite effective but I seldom see them used. Your copier should also have a sleep function.
Most small businesses rent/lease instead of own. Negotiate your lease so that the power or utility portion is fixed. Utility costs are only going up so turning a variable budget item into a fixed one helps manage costs. With commercial real estate suffering now is the time to renegotiate your lease - you have the leverage. In exchange for more years get a reduced rate per sq foot and get the power/utility component included as a fixed number. It worked for me.
Answer This Question