Green Accountants in the West: Our Eco Plan

Contact Dan

19 August 2019 Blog

Sidaways are aiming to be the greenest accountants in the West. We are aiming not just to be carbon neutral but also to reduce all unnecessary use of plastics, especially single-use plastics.

How are we planning to be green accountants?

Well, there are simple things any business can do such as:

Changing light bulbs – preferably changing fluorescent tubes and other forms of lighting for a system using LED bulbs.
Getting rid of plastic bottles or other one-time plastics – like many firms, we have been guilty of having a water dispenser with plastic cups for the use of our visitors.
Doing business with green vendors – are our power sources renewable?
Using recycled products – can we use recycled paper?
Using green cleaning products – this should be an easy win!
Encouraging greener travel to work by employees – maybe some of us could car share and maybe some of us should look at the type of transport we are using.
Fitting a charging point at work for electric cars.
Planting a tree for all new customers (or, if the margins are low, customers who exceed a certain spend with your business).
And, in due course, when we have achieved everything we can think of, we can look at undertaking a carbon audit of the business and paying for carbon capture to achieve carbon neutrality.

Some of these measures cost money. Some don’t. We will be looking at all of them for our business and sharing our experiences with you.

The costs of a carbon audit can run to many thousands of pounds. That puts many people off taking the first easy steps. So, we decided we would start at the other end of the scale and do everything we can before we do that. We hope to make a big difference whilst not spending very much.

Where the measure has a larger up-front cost than many would be comfortable with, we hope to show that the investment made has a relatively short payback period.

Some of the measures we have either just completed or are in the process of doing already.

We will keep our clients and followers updated with our progress as we take steps towards becoming carbon neutral eco accountants!

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Dan Routcliffe

Email: dan@sidaways.co.uk

Tel: 01392 360008

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