How Green is Your Business Warehouse?


business warehouse

As you must have noticed, warehouses are bustling places, with products and goods, as well as people and vehicles, constantly on the move. Deliveries come in, deliveries go out; products are also moved internally to new storage locations, and so on. Many warehouses in Hersham now also have assembly and packing departments too, so these premises are even busier and more complicated.

All businesses are striving to get the biggest return on their investments, so many are looking towards environmentally friendly processes and technologies to help them. Going green not only helps to reduce overheads and running costs, it can also provide good PR and increase customer engagement – a win-win situation.

If you’re looking to green up your warehouse, you need to go back to the Three Rs – reduce, reuse and recycle.

Reduce

There are many ways in which a business can reduce its energy and resource consumption – both are equally important, especially as energy costs seem to carry on rising. Any savings made – either in energy or in raw materials – will make that all-important bottom line look better.

Packaging – it’s what’s outside that counts

Businesses are looking to reduce their packaging – new packing materials are lighter in weight whilst still being as efficient as older materials. This reduction in weight reduces shipping and transportation costs, as well as the costs of moving goods around the warehouse itself. Biodegradable packing materials are important to customers, too, as they don’t need to worry about harming the environment.

Seeing the light

Within the warehouse, businesses can reduce their energy costs by using new technology like motion sensors to turn on lights only when an area is occupied. They can also charge appliances and vehicles like forklift trucks overnight, when electricity is often cheaper, as well as installing solar panels or solar-powered air conditioning.

Reuse

Warehouses have long been exponents of reusing resources and objects – think about pallets, for example, as well as plastic tubs and bags. It always pays to look further, however, to see where more objects and resources can be reused.

Return to sender

A lot of companies are interested in returnable packaging – some packaging materials and styles are actually quite expensive and once the order has reached the customer, it’s gone for good! By incentivising customers to return the packaging – with a discount on the next order for example – packaging can be used a few times, saving money and resources.

It’s also possible to repurpose or reuse packaging materials from suppliers, especially cardboard boxes or packing peanuts. This again saves money and raw materials.

Recycle

Businesses can recycle materials easily now – if your company can’t reuse or repurpose something, it can go to a recycling plant instead.

There are many other cases in a warehouse where recycling is a good option – not many premises will be able to recycle or properly dispose of oil, hazardous chemicals or batteries. A thorough audit to examine and identify processes and areas that need to be made greener is a great first step – even better is the fact that these moves invariably mean less expense and more customer loyalty.