One thing that seems to concern the majority of people is how changes in the environment and government responses affect your business.
Whether governments are serious about going green and saving the planet or are just after more taxes will bear out as time progresses.
Below are areas that may affect your business from environmental factor
The biggest changes so far are so-called green taxes. Certainly, in the UK there are higher taxes on the largest cars that pollute the most. Even the London congestion charging zone now has a low-emissions area where the highest polluting vehicles pay an additional charge to enter the city.
These tax changes have changed people’s attitudes towards which cars they drive, but it also affects businesses with vans and lorries as taxes increase. The UK has some of the highest fuel taxes in the world including air passenger duty.
Other areas that have taxes include landfill taxes to discourage landfill of non-compostable waste. There’s also a Climate change Levy which is around 5% added to energy bills. Businesses can mitigate this charge by moving to a green energy tariff that comes wholly from renewable sources. Although the costs may be higher, you can help the environment and reduce your costs.
There are a few tax breaks that businesses may qualify for including land remediation relief. This tax break is for businesses that clean up contaminated land if there’s a substance in, on or under the land that has the potential to do harm to humans, ecosystems or water sources.
This relief is 150% of the cost of the clean up exercise although there are conditions you should check before applying.
There are so many ways in which businesses can cut down on waste and usage of limited supplies of natural resources. Every department in an organisation can help including back-office functions such as accounting.
Examples include:
If every business cut waste by 10% the effect on environmental changes would be quite dramatic because the savings add up worldwide. It’s a mindset change, for reducing our carbon footprint and environmental impact of the way we live our lives and operate our businesses.
To show your staff and customers (and even yourself) you are serious about the environmental impact your business is making how about creating and publishing an environmental policy? An excellent site with a lot of information is this environmental policy development site with free sample policies and help and guidance to help you create a policy that means something.
Your policy will have credence if you can show management commitment, clear and achievable goals with timely updates to your staff and customers on your progress against targets.
The best stance is to integrate environmental thinking into all your business decisions as though it was a financial decision. Every decision you make has a financial impact that’s important and so does the environment. Think how you can reduce waste or not develop something that’s going to impact the environment negatively.
