All businesses now need to be as environmentally friendly as possible. Yet as the economic climate chills, every company also has to focus on their bottom line.

In this episode of smallbusinessadvice.tv presenter, Sean Walsh, welcomes to the studio James Murray, Editor of BusinessGreen - the multimedia publication for firms intent on improving their environmental credentials and Kathryn Vardy from the Carbon Trust. They will offer their top tips for how small companies can make environmental practices work for them by reducing costs and enhancing sales.

Additionally, we will hear from Jon Woodward, Sales Director at NCE Europe in Wiltshire, where they are reaping the benefits of "going green". We have also talked to Debbie Chatting at NetRegs, who provide free environmental guidance for small and medium-sized businesses, so they can make sure they comply with environmental law.

We will also have our regular round up of all the latest small business news from the British Chambers of Commerce, including their response to the MPC's interest rate decision less than an hour before our live programme.

If you have any questions for Sean, James or Kathryn about how 'going green' can help your business, please use the form to send them in early and we will do our best to answer them live during the show.

H: Sean Walsh, Host
J: James Murray, Editor, BusinessGreen
K: Kathryn Vardy, The Carbon Trust
Jon: Jon Woodward, NCE

H: Hello and welcome to SmallBusinessAdvice.TV, brought to you by the British Chambers of Commerce and Dell, in collaboration with Intel. I’m Sean Walsh and a happy new year to you all. Well this show concentrates exclusively on how to go green, and how to reduce both your business costs and enhance your sales. Well we’ve been down to the west of England to catch up with one company who are benefiting from a greener approach, and we’ve also caught up with NetRegs who advise companies on how complying with environmental law can save you money. All of this to come, plus our usual business news round-up, but first I’m delighted to be joined in the studio by James Murray, the editor of the website Business Green, and Kathryn Vardy from the Carbon Trust. Well welcome to both of you

K: Hi

H: And thanks very much indeed for taking time to join us. Ok now I’d like to start this program with quite a tough question really. Now as a small business, at the moment in this current economic climate, I’m working hard to keep my business going. I’m trying to keep people employed, I’m trying to survive. What is the business case for going green? James what are your thoughts on that?

J: The fact is there’s a lot of arguments for and against, but the main point is the long term case for going green is always going to be there. There’s more regulations coming, there’s more risk involved in terms of climate change and legislation, and on top of that you’ve also got the brand benefits that come with going green. If you are starting to look at concerns about sort of financing and keeping the business going, the main argument for going green is pure and simple cost. The fact is energy bills are a major part of almost any business’s cost, can account for up to 10% of the business’s cost, and you can do a lot of things without any upfront cost at all to bring those down. So there’s sort of strong commercial imperatives. I mean even today you’ve seen with the Russia Ukraine crisis, that’s beginning to hit gas prices. The promise of energy bills going down seems to not going to materialise, certainly not in the next 6 months. So energy bills are going to stay at this high level throughout – certainly the first half of the recession and there’s a strong case for addressing that by just bringing down your energy use, and with that you bring down your carbon emissions as well, so you get a win / win on both the green and the business front

H: Kathryn your thoughts? Is James right there?

K: Yes certainly. I mean in the current climate, the current economic climate, wise businesses are looking to reduce their costs, but the good news is that saving carbon also saves you money. The drivers that James mentioned are quite right, people looking at maybe legislation, there might be looking at broader issues like corporate social responsibility and also reducing energy costs, and they’re all reasons why people have come to the Carbon Trust for our advice. You find that it varies over time, and the reasons that bring people forward, and certainly at the current time cost saving is a really strong driver for business

H: I mean traditionally environmentalists have been seen as a group of tree-huggers almost, but that has changed today hasn’t it?

K: Absolutely, I mean being green, caring about the environment and reducing your carbon footprint really makes good business sense for all the drivers that we’ve talked about, that bringing your cost down within your business at the current – in the current economic climate means that, you know, potentially that’s something that means you won’t have to go through to job cuts and salary freezes

H: Indeed, so it’s a question of helping you survive rather than a hindrance James?

J: Absolutely and I mean there’s also this growing school of thought put forward by people like Barak Obama with this Green New Deal, Gordon Brown talking along the same lines as well, that you’re positioning yourself better for when the upturn does come around, you’re sort of minimising your risks in terms of legislation, you’re starting to look at new green products that we’re seeing increased demand for, and you’re seeing a lot of the big pioneering business, the big leaders of British business people like the CBI, Richard Branson, Terry Leahy at Tesco’s and the like, they’re all signed up to this, they’re all very very serious and very, very committed to cutting the carbon emissions of their businesses, because they see that it makes good, financial and long term business sense

H: Because – Kathryn, you’ve seen at the Carbon Trust a swing really away from you know corporate, social responsibility ideas, more into a much more business-focussed, financially driven demand for economic policies?

K: I wouldn’t necessarily call it a swing away, all of those drivers are still there, and the drivers around corporate social responsibility and the more longer term climate change issues, they are still there and they’re still very important, but with the current, you know, economic climate, certainly it is making people look at the bottom line, look at how they can save costs, and the good news for companies is that if you can save energy then you know potentially that means that you don’t have to look at, you know, staff salaries or job cuts

H: James, it’s all well and good, save me money, but is it going to cost me money to implement these policies?

J: Yes and no. Obviously if you’re going for a big overhaul of your business like some of the larger firms are, yes that has an upfront cost, although the point is of course that the payback periods are relatively short. You tend to see 18 month / two year even three year payback periods for the longer, for the big projects. But the point for a lot of small businesses is there’s an awful lot you can do without any cost whatsoever, and it’s just a case of thinking about the environment and thinking about energy in your day-to-day business. Simple things like turn-off campaigns, of your PCs, of your equipment at night shows to your staff that you care shows to your staff that you are interested in environmental issues, and each PC they reckon that if it’s left on overnight costs you about £30 a year, now if you’ve got a fleet of 100 / 200 PCs you’re already talking 4, even 5 figure sums that can be saved just by saying to your staff, can you turn that off and that adds into everything, maybe encouraging staff not to take as many trips when they don’t need to, doing a little bit more online, maybe asking them not to commute in as much, all saves on your energy – on your fuel bills, so there’s a lot you can do just with very, very simple low-cost measures

H: Well that’s quite a compelling argument. Well let’s hear now from one man who knows all about the benefits of going green – we went to meet Jon Woodward, the sales director of the Wiltshire-based data storage solutions firm, NCE

Jon: As a company you always try and put yourself forward in the best light, be it through the facilities you have, financially or whatever you know people are looking at when they’re looking for a supplier. And now, you know the green element is a big part of the world that we live in, be it from our kids at school telling us what we should be recycling, to the businesses and places that we work. So we felt it was strategically a good thing to do, and we all believed in at as people as well, so it was – it made a lot of sense for us to do that. The first thing that we’ve had to do is education, and it’s education to ourselves and the staff that work here at NCE. One of the programs that we’ve put together over the last couple of years, we call it the PEP program which is the Part Exchange Program, it’s a way for companies to recycle unwanted or excess inventory, people send in to their unused products, we go through, we’ll refurbish them, making them sellable, re-marketable, and then when we sell them on the open market we give them a profit share. Pretty much all the staff now are behind all the green measures that we’ve put in place, in fact a lot of the staff are responsible for coming up with some of the ideas. I mean we recently had somebody give us an idea of the way of doing it – changing a process so that we use a lot less paper. So again, it’s encouraging people to actually be a part of it. I think initially once you start putting the program together and realising what your targets are, what you’re looking to achieve, it takes some time to do the planning, but not a huge amount. Once it then starts implementing, it becomes part of the everyday process. You know, rather than throwing it in the bin you recycle it in another bin, so it makes no difference. Once it’s up and running it takes very little time.

As far as costs savings are concerned, in the first year alone we saw a 25% reduction in our electricity bill, and that just goes from simple turning things off when you’re not using them, be it rooms or computers. Make sure your screens are turned off at night, so absolutely. Again things like we’ve changed all our cars to diesel cars now. Putting these processes into place I think small companies will benefit. At the end of the day I think a lot of this is going to become legislation anyway, and you’re going to be forced to do it, so it’s better to take it, do it in a timely fashion in a controlled way that suits you, and I think everyone will see good benefits from it, absolutely

H: Jon Woodward there from NCE. Now James he makes some very compelling points. Saving a quarter of your electricity bill, that’s a huge financial incentive isn’t it?

J: Yes absolutely like I say energy is a cost that’s rising for all businesses, virtually every single independent analysis you look at of the future energy prices show that it’s going to be going up well above inflation, for the – well almost indefinitely really. I mean there’s concerns about oil supplies and the like as we mentioned earlier, the risk that comes with supplies as well, so anything you can do to bring those cuts into play is relevant, and 25%, that’s a tidy amount for any business. And of course you can go deeper still, if you start to think about when – your next time you’re upgrading your equipment, nobody’s saying do it immediately but the next time, say, you are upgrading your IT infrastructure, your air conditioning units or maybe looking at a new property, just consider what the overall cost is, how the energy comes into play and look at the greener options. And you can find that over a sort of 4, 5 year timeline you can bring in even bigger cuts in the quarter, you look – there are companies that have delivered cuts upward of 50 / 60%

H: Ok, but you make a very convincing case for that James but Kathryn, ok I’m won over now, I like the idea, I want a strategic policy now to go green because I want to save money. Where can I get help and what kind of help can I get from someone like the Carbon Trust to be able to put this into practice?

K: Really we have a wide variety of help for different types of businesses and at different situations. Some of them at the beginning of the journey, some maybe have already done the low-cost measures and they’re looking for help further down the line. Someone just starting out maybe, great place to start is our advice line, or the website. We have a lot of information and publications there that’s both sector-specific but also technology specific. So if you want to start going around your office or your business, then you can start you know understanding where are the first places that you should look and to find some of these low-cost measures. Once you get to maybe some of the capital investment, at the Carbon Trust we have zero interest loans for SMEs, so this is something that we’ve had for many years, but we’ve in particular looked at it in the recent climate and have expanded the loan scheme

H: So what sort of – I mean it sounds very interesting, interest-free loan from the Carbon Trust. How do I go about getting hold of that and what kind of procedures would I need to be implementing in order to attract that kind of funding?

K: The procedure for applying is very easy. There’s an online application which is very fast. The kinds of projects that we would be interested in, obviously it’s projects that are going to save carbon, but that can be building-related technologies, it could be lighting installations, it could be insulation, it could be heating, really a wide variety of different technologies, providing that the carbon saving are there. The types of funds that can be available through these loans are up to, now £200,000. So that’s an increase of £100,000 where it was previously. We’ve also increased the amount of money that’s available, so last year we had £21 million available for loans, that has now increased to £31 million. So the message really for businesses, is even if you’ve had a loan in the past, you can now come forward again because we’ve increased the threshold. It also means that some of the ambitious projects would also qualify for this large amount of funding

H: Indeed. Well while we’re on the subject of finance, interest and loans, let’s get over to the newsroom now and Sara Beirne for the latest business news headlines

“Thank you Sean. Here are the latest headlines. The MPC has just announced a further interest rate cut of half a percentage point, bringing the Bank of England base rate down to 1.5%. Despite the cut, David Cairn, the BCC’s chief economist believed the MPC should have gone further and is already calling for another cut in February. And he added that lower interest rates will need to be supplemented by more far-reaching measures, including increasing the supply of money within the economy. £38 million, that’s the estimated cost to businesses due to the last 3 days’ chaos on the west coast mainline into and out of Euston, the BCC believe. Director General David Frost says that Network Rail has no excuse for the failures and that they must ensure that there is a rapid and effective improvement in the liability of the network. And finally, the BCC is urging the low pay commission to recommend maintaining the national minimum wage at its current level, until economic conditions have significantly improved. The BCC has calculated that an increase in the minimum wage by the same amount as last year, would cost businesses a massive £300 million. David Frost says that most businesses are prioritising survival at the moment,and any rise in the minimum wage would only add to unemployment, which is now forecast to reach 3 million by 2010. That’s all for now, back to you Sean.

H: Thanks very much indeed Sara for those business news headlines. Just a quick reminder that this is a live show, so if you want to submit your questions just put them into the box there, click send and we’ll do our very best to answer them in the time that we have here today. Number of questions coming in now, they’re coming in thick and fast. We just had one in from Graham, he writes “are there any quality marks or standards which businesses can achieve by being green, therefore being able to include this on our corporate branded material?” So looking for some kind of endorsement. Kathryn I guess it’s something like the ISO 9001 maybe, is this something that I can get an endorsement from the Carbon Trust?

K: Certainly there are two areas that we’ve launched in recent years. One is the Carbon Trust standard, this was really – looking again at the energy efficiency accreditation scheme which some of your viewers may be aware of, that focused particularly on energy efficiency, but broadening that out to look more generally at a company’s carbon footprint, so the Carbon Trust standard will look at the company’s measuring and actively managing down their carbon footprint, and in order to achieve the Carbon Trust standard you have to have shown that you have actually reduced your carbon footprint. So that’s a really nice indication for a company that they can use to demonstrate to their customers and the public that they have met the criteria and are reducing their carbon emissions. The other is the carbon label company, and that’s specifically labelling off products, so products such as washing powder, or packets of crisps, so looking at the carbon footprint of generating that particular product, and those companies have also committed to reduce that carbon footprint over time

H: James, do you think there’s sufficient awareness of this labelling, this branding, these endorsements now? Do you see that they’re being valued for a company to have this kind of signage on their material or their company logos?

J: In terms of the labelling it’s still very, very early days, I mean it’s still almost at the pilot scheme stage, but you have got big names behind it, people like Tesco and Walkers and the like. There does seem to be early evidence that it does work, that customers are interested in it, they engage pretty well from it, from the trials, the trials seem to have shown that, and ultimately you will see, begin to see customers paying similar attention to it as they do so with food labelling and the like, and starting to consider that. On top of it, in terms of broader carbon footprinting, there’s a strong regulatory argument for looking at this, because within the new climate change bill which was passed into law late last year, the government does now have the freedom to sort of start mandating companies to report. They’re not going to – they haven’t exercised it as yet, but there’s the option there. We’ve seen Denmark make a – recently make CSR reports mandatory, so there’s sort of global trend that companies are going to have to get their house in order in this respect, and as always with regulation, those that do it first will find that the bills are a lot lower and it’s a lot easier

H: Indeed. That’s very interesting, you touched on those legal points because there are legal implications that businesses need to be aware of. Well to give us some guidance in this area we went along to see Debbie Chatting at NetRegs. Now NetRegs is the government agency who provide free, environmental guidance for small and medium-sized businesses so that they ensure that they can comply with environmental law

“NetRegs is a website designed specifically to help small business n the UK to comply with environmental legislation. It’s backed by the Environment Agencies in England, Scotland and Northern Island as well as Wales, and it provides plain English guidance to businesses that make it easily accessible and understandable. It’s really important for all businesses to know about the environmental regulation that applies to them. If they don’t they could fall foul of the law. NetRegs provides guidance for about 112 different business types so it’s easy to understand what does apply to you. If you don’t understand and you fall foul of the law, you could get fined or prosecuted. The other very important thing about knowing about environmental regulation is that you know your rights. For example NCE have found lots of guidance about the WEEE Regulations, and as a result they’ve been able to return their old, discarded electrical equipment back to their suppliers, saving them an awful lot of money. There’s a feature on our website called the Waste Directory. Now this is populated by licensed sites, they’re licensed by the Environmental Agency, in England and Wales so you know that they are bonefide, you can search by the type of business waste that you need to get rid of, or recycle, and you just search by postcode. It will return a map showing you where to find these waste sites, and also the distance and type of waste that they will dispose of. Businesses can visit the NetRegs website www.netregs.gov.uk and join our E-alert subscribers. Now that means that you – every month you get sent an email,free of charge it’s totally anonymous, it comes to your inbox and it tells you about existing law changes and anything forthcoming that you may need to know about in advance. It saves businesses on average £2600 a year which is a significant saving. It also helps businesses to win new business. In the supply chain we know for a fact that businesses are looking very hard at their supplier’s credential. As a supplier in the supply chain, if you can demonstrate you have good green credentials, you’ll stand a greater chance of winning new business, and that can only be good.

H: Some interesting points there about regulatory issues. James I just want to touch on one of them there. The WEEE directive, what’s all that about?

J: Yes that’s an EU legislation, stands for the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive which is a bit of a mouthful. As with a lot of EU legislation it’s hugely complex, but the crux of it is it’s governed by this polluter pays principle that the companies that make IT equipment and electrical equipment and the like, much of which contains a lot of toxic, nasty chemicals that can do a huge amount of damage to the environment, they have a responsibility to provide recycling of that equipment in a safe and environmentally friendly manner. So they have to pick up the bill for that, but it also means there’s actually legal repercussions for businesses that use that equipment as well because you have to legally go through a sort of officially government approved recycler or waste handler to ensure that your kit is being handled in the proper way and not, as is still happening in some cases, sent to countries in Africa and Asia where it’s recycled in less than ideal conditions

H: Or effectively it’s being dumped on

J: It is, it’s being dumped and the – some of the valuable materials in that – the material is stripped out but done so in sort of harmful conditions for the people working on them, pollutes water supplies and the like, and there’s a huge sort of brand risk as well to this, because a lot of public sector bodies and companies have been found by Greenpeace and they’ve actually found their equipment in dumpsites in Ghana –

H: Interesting yes

J: Gone back to the company and said well what are you doing about this, this isn’t good enough which of course it isn’t

H: And one of the strong arguments about following the regulations is it actually saves you money as she mentioned there, which was very strong. I’ve just got time for one quick question, we just had another one in from a guy called Simon in Godmanchester, Simon says “there’s been a lot of talk about large companies using the green agenda not through want of being environmentally friendly, but seize upon the publicity opportunities. How can firms avoid being accused of such green washing?” Kathryn, Green washing?

K: IT is a term that people use, obviously it’s important from the point of view of a company reputation that if you’re going to make a statement around your credentials that, you know, that can be supported and believed, and really this is one of the reasons for launching the Carbon Trust Standard so that around the carbon footprint of a company which a large number of companies already include as part of their annual reports, this is an independent assessment of the data that you’re putting forwards, that allows you to have that sort of stamp of approval on the figures that you use

J: There’s a huge amount of confusion around Green Washing, it’s become this sort of catchall term and when it’s referring to companies that are making claims that are patently false or overstated then fair enough, they’re in the wrong, they should be exposed, but the idea that a company is using green initiatives to promote its products and promote itself, what exactly is wrong with that? That is how markets work, that they’re trying to drive demand for these new products, or tap into demand for new green products, because people are interested in it, they should be free to promote that as best as possible, as long as they’re in line with actually what they’re delivering and they’re not overstating what they’re doing

H: Well James has provided us with his top ten tips on how you can save money by going green and you can see those on our website smallbusinessadvice.tv. Well that’s all we have time for today, I hope you’ve enjoyed this program and if you’d like help on any issues facing your business, do visit the website, that’s smallbusinessadvice.tv, where you’ll find a wealth of guidance and information. Our next show is at 1pm on Thursday 22nd January so make a note in your diary, that’s 13.00 on Thursday 22nd January, when I’m delighted to say we’ll be joined by Martha Lane-Fox who if you remember she was the co-founder of lastminute.com and is now a non-executive director at Marks & Spencer, at Channel 4 television and at MyDeco. Well we’ll be focusing on what’s regarded as your greatest asset – your people. Well we hope to see you then, thanks very much indeed for watching.