Creating an Eco-Friendly business can be a challenge. Often, it requires some upfront costs, and changes in your company culture. We interviewed some of the most eco-friendly companies in Denver CO asking them, “How have you incorporated eco-friendly practices into your business?”
We received many great responses, check out their answers below:
A greener workplace can mean a lighter ecological footprint, a healthier and more productive place to work, and good news for the bottom line. Like many other businesses, we have the choice to limit our footprint on the environment. We choose to make a difference, and here are a few ways that we are doing it.
We buy and sell only eco-friendly products as well as locally made products. When an order has been placed with Naturally Loved we mail it with recycled and post consumer products and packaging. We try to keep all our fixtures and decorations eco-friendly as well. Whether it is buying through antique dealers or building them ourselves with found materials! It is fun to be so green with a store, knowing that our footprint is not the same as that of a Target or Wal-Mart and the challenge is great too!
Most products we sell are eco friendly: We responsibly recycle over 100,000 pounds of ink and toner cartridges annually. In our pack & ship services we offer “eco-boxes” which are basically used boxes. We also refurbish and resell our “eco-Brand” copiers which keeps a copier out of the landfill every time we sell one.
We have incorporated eco-frinedly practices into our business in several ways. We switched to all environmentally friendly LED lighting. We have gone bagless so customers have to bring a bag. We’ve been bagless for a couple of years now, so most of our customers know. We have reusable bags available for purchase if anyone forgot theirs, but we’ve found that most people are excited to know we’ve gone bagless when we tell them. Almost everyone has a bag in their car or on them these days so it hasn’t been a problem.
Dsenyo is a social enterprise, fair trade company and makes every effort to use low-impact dyes and sustainable fibers like buriti palm and jute where possible. We reduce waste by composting organic scrap material, and we re-purpose textile remnants for use in other products. In our USA operations we always use 100% recycled paper, our marketing materials are printed using soy-based inks and we do as much of our business digitally as possible to avoid unnecessary printing and paper usage.
Historically, the term “environmentally friendly” hasn’t been synonymous with the dry cleaning industry. Revolution Cleaners aims to change that trend by deploying several eco-friendly measures into our daily operations.
The biggest factor in the negative public opinion of the dry cleaning industry is the toxicity of traditional dry cleaning solvents. Revolution Cleaners uses cutting edge technology and biodegradable solvents that are friendly to the earth, water, and air. As an extra precaution, we also dispose of all waste solvent through an environmentally friendly hazardous waste disposal service despite the fact that there is no legal need or obligation to do so. Revolution Cleaners also focuses on reducing water consumption by investing in new equipment that runs on a fraction of the water usage of traditional industrial washers.
In addition to our efforts to clean clothes in an environmentally friendly manner, Revolution Cleaners encourages customers to recycle hangers and poly by placing recycling bins in each of our stores. Customers who take advantage of our free pickup and delivery service are also encouraged to return their hangers and poly to their driver to be recycled at our production facility.
Since our free pickup and delivery service is a large part of our business, we greatly value and appreciate fuel efficient vehicles. We even have a hybrid Toyota Prius as part of our fleet. Having fuel efficient vehicles is only part of the equation. We also invest in GPS and mapping technology that allows us to maximize the efficiency of our routes, keeping our vehicles on the road for the least amount of time possible.
Conscious Real Estate is residential real estate company, which has sought to include eco-friendly practices in a variety of ways. Their office is at Green Spaces, which is a solar-powered building that composts and recycles waste, maintains low water usage, and so forth. Conscious Real Estate specializes in eco-friendly homes and teaches clients how to make their homes more energy-efficient. They utilize paperless contracts and maintain electronic files to conserve the large quantities of paper that once was required in real estate transactions. Conscious Real Estate offers bike tours as an alternative to driving when visiting homes for sale, which is not just eco-friendly, but is fun and allows home-buyers to see, hear, and smell the neighborhoods. Last but not least, they donate 10% of every commission to the nonprofit of their client’s choice and client’s regularly choose nonprofit beneficiaries which work on behalf of the environment.
As the Denver green roofing industry leader, Severe Weather Roofing & Restoration is proud to promote sustainability in all areas of our business. We use new technologies in energy efficiency and recycling that help conserve natural resources, and we share our knowledge to help our team members, and customers do the same. We are also a proud supporter of the Construction & Demolition Recycling Association.