Being sustainable and green has been on all the companies' radars for over a decade, but a few actually made it to the other side, a successful one in fact. Building your strategy and core beliefs on being a green company is a good choice, but it is a coin with two sides: one wrong step and you might as well be out. So today, we will go through some of the tips on how to run such a business with the help of Pyoor — sustainable services provider, a project that we have done a while back.
Plan From the Start
Right from the very start, you have to plan everything in advance. A good thing would be to hire a good branding expert that will help you set up your company's vision and tone, and work from there.
Let's see how we did it with Pyoor:
You see, everything about the brand resembles the idea of being green and sustainable. You can actually understand that even before you click the link — the name says it all. It screams of purity and greenness. You might want to do the same things to your brand, and it will give you a great kickstart.
Get a Good Website
After the branding is done, you want to get an appropriate website design that will further elaborate on what you are doing and what's green about it.
Pyoor is a great example of using their main business point by designing a whole website around it. Green and white tones are your best bet on this stage, and don't worry about being a copycat — there are tons of ways a good designer can convey your idea while still preserving the uniqueness.
Work on Your Core Principles
You must be all about awareness of how businesses harm the environment with unethical resource consumption and global problems like climate change and pollution. Your main aim is to play around these core principle and build the whole company on its basis.
Pyoor's website relies on the point above: it plays around a principle of being aware of the environmental problems and offers solutions to resolve them by making green choices in your routines — be if a haircut, or a new lawnmower free of CO².
Do The Research
Being sustainable is a very bold thing to just say and never actually back it up. Most of the companies decide to just go with the flow and adapt to the market by offering small things like paper-based bags, but can it really be called "being sustainable"? The short answer is no. The long answer is, they are green washing.
It doesn't work like that, and like I said before, sustainability has to be in the core of your company. For that, you can hire an expert that will do the research and give you advice on how to really make changes in how things work both in micro and macro levels.
While working on Pyoor we made sure to do the extensive research to set the right strategy for the company, and to keep it consistent, pure, and simple.
Be Sincere
That is another code principle that you absolutely have to include in your company guidebook. We have seen many companies green washing their way to the top, but truth is, they never made it there. Even if they did, people would be quick to debunk all of their marketing strategies and it would mean a total fiasco for them.
Being totally clear in your intentions is good for every business, but when tackling such an important and somewhat sensitive thing as the environment — it's twice as important. It is a digital age, and the news take seconds to reach thousands of thousands people, so you better want to keep those news positive by telling your customers the truth. Otherwise, they are going to find out.
Pyoor is very straightforward about what they do, and they prefer to keep it that way because it helps to build a better credibility. Being honest about their business and what they do helps to get more clients while still doing their thing and getting revenue from it.
A good practice that our client came up with is to include a counter of how much carbon footprint they have prevented to be released — it is roughly calculated from the amount of specific secvices people provide and the amount of sold green lawnmowers with electric engines instead of regular ones.
Set Long-Term Goals
A good practice would be to try and set a couple of weekly, monthly, and yearly goals. It can be in the smallest things like to get rid of all the plastic bags in your company and offer more green ones, or in something like reducing your CO² footprint of getting rid of it more together, which is a huge leap forward.
In reality, you can't just take what you have and make it greener instantly. Working on your sustainability is a hard and long way, but it pays off, and besides money, you will get recognition and more customers. Many businesses oversee the fact that each year, more and more people become aware of environmental problems and start noticing that their favorite vendors only contribute to them.
These people are willing to pay more in return of the comfort of the thought that they help saving the Earth alone. It is a big psychological factor, and it adds a whole new layer to business-customer relationship — instead of just receiving the product you give them (almost) free satisfaction from the fact that they are doing something for the better future.
