Happy Earth Day for yesterday (and I would also like to wish William Shakespeare a very Happy 405th Birthday today, hope you’re partying down)!

If you didn’t get a chance to engage in some sustainable reflection on Earth Day yesterday, I hope this newsletter helps…

Most of us are creatives who work remotely at the minute, making projects or selling products via the internet. It’s often taken for granted that digital work relies on electricity and energy to power what we make every day. As currently we don’t have many working environment alternatives, and in honour of Earth Day, here are some tips for working more sustainably.

I hope you find inspiration to bring into your daily life, too!

If you work on a laptop… ?

Did you know that 10% of the world’s energy is used for the internet? It’s often taken for granted that digital work relies on electricity and energy to power what we make every day. So, it’s important to think about saving energy while we work. If you’re a business owner, you can achieve this through choosing an eco-friendly website host that uses green energy to power its servers. (If you need a new website, our friends at Side Hustle Sites are a great option for this because they themselves are powered by an eco-friendly server). That said, working remotely is better for the environment than going into an office, because no commute means less CO2!

Another way to save energy when working digitally is through your laptop itself. You can save bandwidth (and therefore energy) by blurring your background in group calls, dimming your screen a few notches and using optimal energy and battery saving settings. 

Search engines such as Ecosia donate 80% of their profits to reforestation programmes, so the more you search, the more trees are planted!You can find free online courses on living more sustainably! Check online learning sites such as FutureLearn, OpenLearn, Coursera, or LinkedIn Learning to find the right course for you.

If you’re a small business… ?

• Did you know that 10% of the world’s energy is used for the internet? It’s often taken for granted that digital work relies on electricity and energy to power what we make every day. So, it’s important to think about saving energy while we work. If you’re a business owner, you can achieve this through choosing an eco-friendly website host that uses green energy to power its servers. (If you need a new website, our friends at Side Hustle Sites are a great option for this because they themselves are powered by an eco-friendly server). That said, working remotely is better for the environment than going into an office, because no commute means less CO2!
• Another way to save energy when working digitally is through your laptop itself. You can save bandwidth (and therefore energy) by blurring your background in group calls, dimming your screen a few notches and using optimal energy and battery saving settings.
• Search engines such as Ecosia donate 80% of their profits to reforestation programmes, so the more you search, the more trees are planted!
• You can find free online courses on living more sustainably! Check online learning sites such as FutureLearn, OpenLearn, Coursera, or LinkedIn Learning to find the right course for you.

If you’re a small business… ?

• Sourcing your products and materials from a sustainable place is really crucial. And ‘sustainability’ doesn’t just include an eco-friendly place where the materials come from, but also if your suppliers demonstrate good ethical, social, environmental and fair trade practices. Doing some digging and interrogating these sustainability questions is the best place to start when becoming an eco-friendly business, and prevents you from being guilty of ‘greenwashing’, where businesses pretend to be more sustainable than they are.
• If you’re posting products to your customers, there are lots of ways to make your postage process more eco-friendly, and that can start with your packaging. Making your packaging fun and functional gives a positive experience to your customer, meaning it is less likely to end up in landfill. You could use biodegradable materials such as cornstarch and seaweed, and also avoid using more than one type of plastic because this prevents recyclability. Read a more holistic view of the environmental impact of packaging here.
• The admin items you need to run your business, such as printers, paper, cleaning products and pens can all be damaging to the environment because of the processes used to manufacture them. Using recycled paper, items used from pre-consumer waste, green cleaning products that don’t have harsh chemicals and eco-friendly stationery allows your business to maintain a circular product economy and reduces your overall waste. Also, you can fit this into your marketing that you operate as a low-waste company! You can find more details on becoming a zero-waste company here.
• If you need to buy anything to run your business (or your life, really), purchasing second hand items is always far more sustainable than buying brand new, because it uses no additional resources beyond transportation and lowers pollution levels. Charity shops full of second hand gems have now reopened, or you can shop online with Gumtree, eBay, Vinted or Preloved. Read more about second-hand items (particularly sustainable fashion) here.
• Engaging with environmental initiatives, partnering with other eco-conscious companies and donating profits to climate-change charities (if you can spare the money) is another eco-friendly practice to institute into your business. Find more info here.

I hope that these tips were helpful and gave you some more insight into making your business/life practice more sustainable!

I’m going to leave you with this Rupi Kaur poem to reflect on.

If you have any tips on working more sustainably that I missed out here, please hit reply and let me know! Hope you have a lovely weekend.

Viv xx