Money can grow on TREEs!

The Green Business programme has launched a free online tool to help small and micro companies manage their water, waste, and energy costs. The online tool called TREE (Tool for REsource Efficiency) can help identify areas where your business can save money through improved management practices.

Green Business (http://greenbusiness.ie) is funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and provides free, expert, and confidential advice to SMEs to help them to achieve cost savings through greater efficiencies in water, waste and energy.

The free and confidential tool allows your business to carry out a quick assessment of your current business practices, and takes less than 15 minutes to complete. As a user, you have the option to use the tool as a “guest”, or to register with Green Business. Registering to use the tool enables you to record and store your results, and allows you the option to revisit and conduct another assessment in 6 or 12 months-time, therefore tracking your improvement progress.

The questionnaire consists of a series of multiple-choice questions related to energy, water, waste, and training of staff on environmental management. Each question comes with an explanation to help you to choose the answer that best reflects the activity in your hardware business.

From the short questionnaire, you will receive the following:

• A resource efficiency score ranging from 0% to 100%. Businesses with an “Excellent” resource efficiency score will have scored more than 80%.
• A report identifying opportunities for waste reduction and improved efficiency in your business.
• A resource efficiency action plan tailored to your business.

The report and the action plan will be tailor made to your hardware business based on the answers you supplied to the multiple-choice questions. The report and action plan will
detail recommendations of where efficiencies relating to the management of your energy, water and materials can be made. In 2016, Green Business was involved in a government funded pilot energy efficiency training programme for small retailers. The training programme worked with 12 small retailers across the country. The Green Business team witnessed first-hand that retailers and other small business owners are generally too busy managing core business tasks to focus on waste prevention. According to James Hogan, Programme Manager with Green Business: “Many small businesses are not monitoring utility consumption and costs, and therefore are not aware of the opportunities to reduce costs. As the tool only takes 15 minutes, it can help a small business begin the journey to have more resource efficient business practices and save money.”

The Tool for REsource Efficiency is available on the Green Business website: http://greenbusiness.ie/sme-efficiency-and-cost-reduction-questionnaire/

For more information please contact Mr. James Hogan, Green Business Programme Manager at james.hogan@greenbusiness.ie or 087-2452238

This Business Support article featured in the January/February edition of The Hardware Journal.