How does your business become sustainable?

Sustainability in your company

Do you want your company to become sustainable?

The following article suggests several options for how to do this.

It should be mentioned that there are many more ways and means to sustainability. Whether your company uses the options listed below or others, it doesn't matter. The main thing is that you actively deal with sustainability. Even turning small adjusting screws brings a lot!

The digital business card from Lemontaps

A first step toward sustainability is to eliminate disposable products. Throwaway products like flyers, brochures and paper business cards. All these things are a thing of the past. Lemontaps digital business card gives you the opportunity to store all relevant contact information in one place, on your digital profile. The NFC business card along with your digital profile also provides space for:

• Images
• Presentations
• All social media links
• Flyer
• Brochures

Besides your contact information, the digital business card can store everything that is relevant to you. So you can share all your relevant files and information sustainably and efficiently via NFC or QR code without even using a single piece of paper in the process. 

Sustainable packaging

The situation will sound familiar to you. You bought something online and then in joyful anticipation received the long-awaited online order. The packaging consists of several layers of paper and plastic. What happens next? That's right, a large mountain of packaging waste ends up in the trash can. Does that have to be? Absolutely not! The online fashion retailer Zalando was a role model for us. There, the ordered goods are shipped exclusively in recyclable paper bags. It doesn't always need plastic and plastic. It also works without!

At Lemontaps, we completely eliminate plastic from the packaging of our NFC business cards. In addition, we always send our NFC business cards in recyclable packaging.

Nowadays, more and more customers want sustainable packaging. 31% of customers nowadays consciously buy products with sustainable packaging. In addition, 66% would like to be informed directly about the sustainability of the packaging. These figures confirm that customers want sustainable packaging and transparent communication about it.

Sustainable purchasing in the company

You should also keep sustainability in mind when choosing suppliers and while making purchases and placing orders for your company. Make sure the products you sell are recyclable and sustainably produced. Order your office supplies from sustainable vendors. Find out where the goods you order come from and how they are transported. Give print jobs to companies that print on recycled paper. Go for sturdy and durable materials. That way, you won't have to keep buying new materials.

We at Lemontaps have also addressed this. All of our NFC business cards are completely recyclable. The wooden NFC business card is also FSC certified. This means that the wood used in the NFC business card comes from sustainable forest management. As you can see, there are no limits to sustainable creativity.

Home office is sustainable

Home office and remote work were still largely foreign words two years ago. But during the Corona crisis, companies had to rethink existing processes and change the way they worked. This helped the environment. Less rush-hour traffic led to lower CO2 emissions. One experiment found that a virtual video conference with 166 participants produced about 69 kilograms of CO2. The same conference held physically produced a full 52 tons of CO2. Isn't that shocking??

At Lemontaps, we capitalize on the word home office. Half of our employees work full time remotely. The other half work one or more days a week in their home office. In addition, the weekly team meetings are always digital. We don't just network, we also work digitally!

So before the next physical meeting, think about whether it is really necessary or whether it can be replaced by a digital meeting.

Establish a sustainable corporate culture

If you implement some of these things in your company, you have already achieved a lot. However, it is important that you anchor the topic of sustainability in your corporate culture and consciously act accordingly. This also includes your employees. Make all colleagues in the company aware that a sustainable corporate culture is important to you. Communicate all measures transparently and call on your employees to contribute ideas themselves and reward environmentally friendly and sustainable actions.

Act sustainably - and talk about it!

Unfortunately, just acting sustainably is not enough. Talk about it. Give sustainability a voice. Bring the topic of sustainability onto your website and show in a separate section what you have already implemented and what goals you are setting yourself. Also admit what is not yet going perfectly and what you still want to implement. This creates transparency and credibility. If you are planning or implementing specific sustainable actions, share them on your social media channels and call for participation. If certain information about sustainability is important to your customers, such as the environmentally friendly packaging of products, you can also place it in your FAQ.

Of course, the following applies to all these measures: Remain honest and authentic. Every contribution, no matter how small, counts and additionally improves your image internally and externally.