As you’d expect from a business energy services company, at Low Carbon Energy we’re passionate about helping our customers to be sustainable as possible. That’s why this week’s blog brings you some simple tips on how to improve the sustainability of your supply chains.

Plan Ahead

Before you get started on your sustainability plans, the very first thing you should do is map out your supply chains in their entirety. Depending on the size of your business, this can sometimes be a time consuming task – but it has to be done! Having it literally laid out in front of you can help you easily pick out the parts of your supply chain to target with your new initiatives.

Start piecemeal, rather than trying to apply a blanket initiative across your entire supply chain. Remember, not every supplier is the same in terms of their size and the structure of their business. Unless you tailor your approach to each of them, you risk having a wildly inconsistent – and therefore ineffective – sustainability policy, as some struggle to implement it. (Although having said that, switching to solar panels for your energy supply is never a bad place to start!)

Essentially, just go slowly. You’ll almost certainly find your supply chain will respond better if you focus on key areas before expanding.

Communicate Clearly

This ties back in to what we were just saying about the difference between suppliers – in order for your sustainability policies to work, you need to have them on side. Just telling them what you want without explaining the benefits won’t motivate them to take it on board, and if they don’t understand the new standards properly they’re almost certainly not going to implement them properly.

Instead, it’s a great idea to lay out your sustainability plans clearly for them, so they can understand all of the new advantages, and how it’ll specifically benefit their business. (This is even easier if the plans are tailored for them, as we’ve mentioned above.) You’ll almost definitely find that once they understand everything fully, their motivation levels for it will soar, vastly improving its effectiveness.

Your suppliers may even start coming up with ideas for further improvements themselves, creating a positive feedback loop that not only helps the businesses of everyone involved, but has fantastic environmental impact.

Make It Easy For Them

Once you’ve mapped out your supply chain and made the effort to understand your suppliers, you’re in a much better position to know their capabilities and concerns, which helps you create an effective plan that’s tailored for each of their businesses.

Making things easy for your suppliers has a huge effect on their ability and willingness to implement your sustainability initiatives. With environmental factors and sustainability becoming ever more important to most modern businesses, it’s likely that many of your suppliers are already motivated to improve the sustainability of their processes, but just need a bit of help to take that next step.

It’s crucial to make things as easy as you can for your suppliers. If things appear too difficult for them it may damage their motivation – or they may simply have trouble implementing it. But if you can present your suppliers with a clear, achievable sustainability plan that has tangible positive effects for their business, it’s an offer that very few sensible people will refuse.

And Finally…

Our last point is a fairly obvious one, but be passionate! By being enthusiastic and forward thinking about your sustainability plans, others around you are far more likely to reflect that enthusiasm right back at you, making total sustainability far easier to achieve.

And when it comes to sustainability, streamlining your energy services is a great place to start. Luckily, at Low Carbon Energy we employ a team of highly-trained experts who specialise in exactly that. By switching to solar energy, you can optimise your energy usage, saving huge amounts on your bills – and at an amazing benefit to the environment, too. What’s not to like?

You can browse our solar panel sectors to find exactly how solar will benefit your organisation, or take a quick look at some of our case studies to see how we’ve helped businesses just like yours.

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