Trimming the waste: boosting efficiency makes good
business sense Juliet Heller, ENWORKS
Business resource efficiency will also improve the UK’s ability to achieve its emission reduction targets and help to address the problem of global resource depletion. Engaging the business sector in efficiency practices is vital. Over one third of energy use in the UK is in the commercial and industrial sector. Each year around £6 billion is spent on energy, but £1 billion of this is wasted by small firms through inefficiencies.
ENWORKS is a flagship business support partnership helping companies across the North West to make cost savings by reducing their use of energy, water and materials and by producing less waste. The partnership’s resource efficiency support is helping to save over 669,000 tonnes of CO2 a year, leading to total savings of over £120 million a year.
A recent Carbon Trust survey of finance directors found that big businesses waste at least £1.6 billion a year on energy that could easily be saved through measures such as upgrading heating and lighting, and training staff in energy efficiency. The research also found that energy efficiency projects deliver an average return on investment of 48 per cent.
In the current economic climate, more and more businesses should be taking advantage of the easy savings to be made by using resources such as energy more efficiently. But are enough companies taking action? The evidence shows that by making simple improvements in business practice - many costing very little or even nothing at all - companies can help to ensure that they have a future. In other words, the efficient use of resources can make the difference between losing and saving a business.
|50| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE
As Samantha Nicholson, Operations Manager at ENWORKS argues, “Not only is there a powerful environmental argument for using resources more efficiently, there is also a strong commercial argument. Being more efficient in your resource consumption means reduced energy bills, lower waste costs, and reduced production costs. Over half of the cost savings ENWORKS has helped to achieve have required no capital cost so you shouldn’t think of resource efficiency as just saving the planet – it is also about making very real savings for your business.”
To facilitate the process, ENWORKS uses its innovative Online Resource Efficiency Toolkit, (see image over page) web-based software that enables a business to record and manage its opportunities to make savings. Since its launch in 2004, the Toolkit has supported over 8,700
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