Sustainable workplaces have all made strategic, conscious choices to improve their operations and perception of their business.
Whether you’re running a one-person venture or a growing team, building a greener workplace is achievable, and it can make a bigger impact than you expect.
Here at 1st Formations, we’re 140 people, but as our Founder and CEO, Graeme Donnelly, shares, collectively, we can make a massive change.
As the UK’s largest company formation agent, we want to lead by example. Let’s inspire the hundreds of thousands of new businesses we start each year to make smart, sustainable business decisions, right from their early stages.
We asked five UK businesses to share the simple, sustainable changes that have worked for them. These ideas are easy to adapt, so why not take one and get started today?
Key Takeaways
- Sustainability is achievable for businesses of all sizes. Small and simple changes to reduce carbon, plastic and water usage can have a significant impact.
- Prioritising sustainability attracts eco-conscious customers, improves brand reputation, and can lead to cost savings.
- No single business can solve the environmental crisis alone, but by leading by example, SMEs can inspire a wider shift towards greener business practices.
1. Reduce carbon emissions via remote working
Globally, transport accounts for around 25% of carbon emissions. Sustainable workspaces can help cut this by switching to home-based working.
How Vestd saved 52 tonnes of CO₂ with remote-first working
One business that made this move is Vestd, a share scheme and equity management platform. It recently achieved B Corp certification. We spoke with Ifty Nasir, Vestd’s Founder and CEO, and he shared how remote work made all the difference for the company’s environmental impact.
Vestd has been on a journey towards sustainability for a number of years. One of the biggest changes it made was to get rid of the physical office, becoming an early adopter of fully remote working.
The company did this just prior to the pandemic and has calculated that this saves at least 52 tonnes of CO2 annually – largely as a result of the team ditching their commute – and that saving continues to grow as Vestd’s team expands.
Vestd also offers staff tips on how to make their home offices eco-friendly, such as not printing unless necessary and using energy-saving lightbulbs.
2. Partner with offsetting organisations
Even the most eco-conscious businesses can’t avoid generating some emissions – supply chains and energy use are especially tricky to control. Carbon offsetting allows you to take meaningful action by balancing out your environmental impact.
How Everybody Agency achieved carbon neutrality
We spoke with Tom Jones, Co-Founder and COO of Everybody Agency, a B Corp health and wellness digital marketing agency, about how partnering with an environmental consultancy helped them achieve this goal.
It’s important that our values are in action across the entire agency. We worked with PathZero to achieve carbon neutral status in 2023. We’ve further committed to reducing our carbon impact and becoming net zero by 2050.
This means not only offsetting our carbon emissions, but taking steps to significantly reduce our climate impact, for example, with remote working, reduced travelling, and paperless client relationships.
Author's Tip
3. Reduce plastic waste
We’re all surrounded by plastic, and cutting back on it can feel difficult, especially since it’s such a reliable and affordable material.
However, an estimated 400 million tonnes of plastic waste are produced every year. Each piece takes between 20 and 500 years to decompose. Even then, it never fully disappears; it just gets smaller.
Businesses are major producers, users, and distributors of plastic products and packaging. Whether it’s supplies or promotional freebies, most workplaces use more plastic than they’d like to admit.
How 71-75 reduced office plastic with thoughtful refreshment choices
71-75 is a certified carbon-neutral serviced office based in London. Nick Payne, 71-75’s Building Manager, shares with us how he reduces plastic waste where possible.
We like to provide our tenants with plenty of refreshments to brighten up their workdays, but the sheer volume of plastic waste this produced was concerning. Even though plastic is recyclable, most of it sadly ends up in landfills or gets incinerated. So, we switched to only providing drinks packaged in minimal-impact materials, such as cans or glass bottles. We also adopted the use of a Zip Tap in the client kitchen area to provide cold, filtered water as a sustainable alternative to the plastic bottles previously used
71-75 also encourage tenants to use reusable cutlery, plates and cups, swap plastic sponges for biodegradable ones, and compost food waste in accordance with the new legislation.
How Hummingbird Travel swapped landfill freebies for sustainable branded gifts
Hummingbird Travel, a luxury travel wholesaler and ground handler, found an impactful way to reduce plastic use. Lucy Macvean-Paine, marketer at Hummingbird Travel, explains how:
We saw how often promotional materials, like pens and stress balls, end up in the bin, and customers don’t really want them anyway. By switching to eco-friendly alternatives like recycled paper notebooks and reusable water bottles, we reduce our environmental impact and stand out to conscientious customers who hopefully end up using and enjoying them!
Author's Tip
4. Reduce water waste: choose efficient taps
We all know it’s important to be economical with water, yet so many offices unnecessarily waste it. This happens in small amounts, like boiling twice as much water as needed, and in larger amounts, like letting the tap run until the water heats up.
How Bizik minimised water use across their London office
Bizik, a telephone-answering provider to UK SMEs, has incorporated solutions to water waste in its London office. Claudia Socratous, Bizik’s Director of Sales, explained to us how.
We partnered with Green Mark to identify how we can reduce our water consumption, and this showed us taps and toilets to be our greatest water consumers. So, we invested in switching to sensor taps in our bathrooms, which have a lower flow rate and systems in place to prevent leakage. A sensor tap will use up to 60% less water than a regular tap.
Bizik recommends switching to Quooker hot water taps, as many people unintentionally boil twice as much water as needed. This reduces water and energy waste, as the tank only uses 10 watts per day to maintain. This is less than a WiFi router, and less than dozens of employees repeatedly boiling the kettle.
Author's Tip
5. Measure and improve workplace sustainability
Certifications like B Corp, Green Mark, or carbon neutrality might sound out of reach, but they can actually be a powerful way to measure how you’re doing and where to go next. While only 2,000 of the 5.5 million active UK businesses have achieved B Corp status, aiming for accreditation gives you a framework to assess progress and spot opportunities for improvement.
Aiming for accreditation will give your company a clear framework to assess your business’ efforts and create a strategy to improve.
How The Cotswold Company used B Corp to raise sustainability standards
We asked Jacquie Silvester, Head of Sustainability and Improvement at furniture and homeware brand The Cotswold Company, to share her thoughts on the impact of achieving a B Corp certification.
Obtaining B Corp certification was an important step for us in our sustainability journey, to not only demonstrate our commitment to being a positive business for environmental and social impact, but also to set the scene for future improvements.
The holistic nature of the B Corp certification means we reviewed all areas of the business from working practices and conditions, to how we work with and treat our suppliers, as well as our emissions, water usage and other environmental considerations.
We were really proud to be certified B Corp in 2024, but know the process doesn’t stop there. We are already reviewing where we can improve and the B Corp Impact Assessment has provided us with a road map of where we go next.
Author's Tip
Make more sustainable choices in your workplace
These businesses show that environmental progress doesn’t need to be complicated. Small, consistent steps really do make a difference.
Whether you’ve already made some planet-friendly changes or you’re just getting started, transforming your business into a greener workplace is possible. By prioritising sustainability, businesses of all sizes and stages can contribute to a greener future.
So, what changes will you make? Let us know in the comments below.
Want to learn more about building a values-led business? Browse the 1st Formations blog for more practical tips and insights.
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