The landscape continues to change for business owners. Today my guest author is business owner Gagandeep Singh, owner of Fortepromo.com. Here's a great list from Gagandeep on tips to create a greener business. This company offers traditional promo products as well as biodegradeable and reusable ones.

Copenhagen Climate Conference stared today and leaders of various countries are going to create some policies to cut on carbon emissions and control the climate changes and I think it is the best time for us, small business owners to take initiatives to turn our business green. Sometimes we don’t realize that even some simple steps taken by us can make huge impact in long term. In this article I would be discussing some very simple tips which would help your business to Go Green.

Use Recycle Products for your office like Recycle Paper, bags etc.
Make use of Natural Light during day time as much as possible.
Shut down your computers when they are not in use or Set them to sleep automatically if not being used.

Try to be paperless. Do paperless Billings, Avoid using paperless cups instead of it provide your employees with a mug which they can use whenever they need.
Donate your old computers, furniture etc which are of no use for you to any organization as charity.

Get lighting audit of your company and change your old tubes with new CFL Tubes. By using Energy efficient appliances not only you would help in conserving energy but would also be lowering your power bills.

Electric Appliances consume Power known as Standby power when they are switched off or are in standby mode. So make sure that all your power devices are connected to power strip that you can switch off in night and save lot of energy from being wasted.

Encourage your employees to use bikes when coming to office. Give Special Recognition or award to such employees. If that is not possible provide them with Passes of Public Transportation.

Make sure that equipments you buy for your office are Energy star rated, which would save your money and electricity.

If feasible, ask your Employees to work from home and send you reports via email, not only it would reduce energy consumption in office but it would also eliminate the carbon emission produced by employees while coming to office and keep your employees happy.

Schedule all conferences or events in Day time as it would save amount of electricity used for lighting for events in night.

Ask your Employees to reduce their office waste and try to recycle them.
Configure your Printer to print on both sides of paper and Prefer to use Eco-font which reduce the usage of ink by 20% while printing.

Do you know that extra programs running on your computer need more system resources which lead to heating up of system more quickly and more power consumption? Uninstall all the unwanted programs from your system.
Shut Down your laptops, printers etc while you are in meeting, conference or talking with somebody else.

Try to use Eco-friendly Promotional Products to your customers in your marketing campaigns and giveaways.

Use web applications like Google Docs for sharing documents with others instead of taking printouts of them and then sharing
Implement 3 R’s- Reduce, Reuse and Recycle in all of your business day-to-day operations.

Use Bio-degradable packaging for your products and while shipping them to your customers.

If you are going to send greeting cards to your clients or friends in upcoming holiday season then send them Green Greeting Cards as they are completely made of Recycle paper.

Use Small Business Cards which are usually half in size than normal business cards for your business.

Place Recycle Bins in the office to collect waste which can be recycled easily.
Prefer to use Video-conferencing, Email and Online chat as medium of correspondence with your client instead of travelling to reduce the carbon emissions used for transportation and to save travel costs.

Gagandeep Singh is an Internet Marketing Executive for Fortepromo.com, which helps Small Businesses promote their brand with high-quality Promotional Products.