Eco Friendly House And Garden

Forget meeting associates in a pub and collecting your mail from a PO Box – get yourself a ‘hot office’.

These days sharing things is the new green alternative to buying your own everything!  Just like hiring the church hall rather than building your own one – you can hire an office space that is already where you want it – and is the right size for your needs.

These new business schemes for small businesses could really be the way forward for your green business!

The Best Space:
If you hire your own office space, you are stuck with it for the length of your lease.  Do you go for the smallest you can find, the largest you can afford or whatever you find that happens to be in the right place?

Then you are stuck with an office that it too small to grow into, a ginormous space to heat and power for just you or an odd shaped space that isn’t really ergonomic or even suits your growing needs.

photo credit: jcortell

So why not consider a scheme that allows you to choose the office size you want on a session to session basis or a scheme that allows you to have an office in the location you prefer but that will suit your needs.

Sometimes your meeting room, business lounge or mailing address can be all the difference between appearing professional or staying small!

Time Saving:
Needless to say, if you only use an office for the important meetings and conferences then you may find yourself organising your work more effectively to suit those days – and getting all your non-important work done at home on on the road.

Also a scheme that lets office space will usually also offer mail sorting and telephone services as well.  This way, someone else will be sorting and forwarding your mail and fielding all your calls – perfect for saving you time sifting through junk mail and endless customers who just want your opening hours/returns policy/prices/website address.

If someone else is doing all the basic time-consuming things for you – then you have more time to focus on the really important things for your green business.

Eco Savings:
And it’s not just time you will be saving – it will be the environmental costs of running an office you might only spend a few hours a day in.  I mean if you have rented that space and you work in that office for an average of 40 hours a week – that means there are 128 hours a week where your office will be sitting empty.

You will have to secure this unit, clean this unit, power this unit, supply water and toilets to the unit, heat and cool this unit and maybe even furnish and repair this unit – all just for you.  Your assistant will be using all their own resources too if you have one.

So thinking big – if your office block or industrial unit has 30 other small businesses in it – that all adds up to a lot of land, resources, costs and wasted time to keep you all in business.

However, 1 single office unit with these 30 businesses rotating office space to suit their needs and their working hours would save so much energy and resources.  Now add on a central reception area where all these businesses have their mail sorted and their calls answered (possibly with just 2 or 3 permanent staff) and you have saved so many resources that it might seem difficult to call your company ‘green’ if it didn’t use this service!

Conclusion:
Whether you are starting a green business or just trying to make your business more green – perhaps you should pretend that you have 30 offices to run instead of just the 1 – then see whether you are still green then.

I know everyone wants to achieve different things – but by scaling up your efforts you can see whether you would still be green if there were 30 of you doing the same thing.

We all have offices, phones, desks, windows, kettles, chairs and heating etc regardless of your business type – so thinking big can sometimes be better.

So before you sign that contract – think big!

Bathrooms are sometimes overlooked in a property – but they could make a huge difference!

Today’s families are not only looking for energy efficient additions to a home – they are looking for the eco basics as well – I mean, who would want a ginormous sunken bath or a thick carpet in the bathroom these days?

People want to feel warm and – lets be honest – a little spoilt in their bathrooms. We might want underfloor heating to keep it warm, a shower enclosure to reduce moisture or spills or even low-flow taps to reduce waste. But we still want the mod cons in there.

Everyone visits your bathroom at least twice a day – so why ignore it for it’s eco potential – and for it’s ability to sell your home when you need to move on.

The Eco Benefits:
I’m not suggesting that you start renovating your bathroom now for no reason other than for ‘a change’ as this really would be a waste of resources – but if you have been staring at the same old tiles for years now, or need to make a change for financial or growing family reasons – then why not start considering your options.

For example, if you have many people living under your roof, you might now realise the simplicity (and water-saving ability) of a shower. With 3 or 4 people needing to wash in the morning, a bath each just isn’t an option – and neither is sharing your bath with your grown-up children!

Toilet flushing for a large family can also be a particular drain on water (and your expenses) – so installing a smaller flush facility might well be something you would be considering in the near future.

Personal Change:
Younger children on the way or already in the home might make you think of a smaller bath tub. Well, they certainly don’t need the whole length of it filled with heated water – being only a few feet long themselves.  However, reducing a few feet of your bath could leave room in the corner for that lovely shower you have been waiting for (and save litres and litres of water every week!).

Older people may well also be considering a change around in the bathroom for safety and mobility issues – both being great opportunities to swap old fixtures and fittings for more eco friendly options.

Selling Your Home:
If you are thinking of changing your bathroom for a house sale – then it could well be worth it.

Making sure that this particular room is clean, fresh and full of eco friendly money-saving features could well swing the sale – and people just love to ‘move right in’ without the added worry and cost of having to redecorate.

Also, some people don’t want to work too hard to save energy, so by opting for modern fixtures that do it all for you could have real selling appeal!

And even if they don’t even notice it’s all eco friendly – it will still look great!