The benefits of raising environmental awareness

Raising environmental awareness can make your business more profitable, your employees more fulfilled, and create a better world for people and the planet. Read on to find out more!

What is environmental awareness?

Environmental awareness is about understanding the impacts that our behaviours have on the environment and making changes to our behaviour to reduce or improve our impact on the world around us.

Traditionally, people have associated environmental awareness with the term sustainability, which is about meeting the needs of today’s generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. It’s about doing business and conducting life in a way we can sustain over time and avoiding further harm to the climate and biodiversity.

But today, businesses increasingly talk about regeneration or regenerative business. This word captures the idea that we can’t sustain—or carry on—business as normal. Instead of keeping things as they are, we need to go even further by actively expanding habitats, improving people’s livelihoods, and having a strong, positive impact on the world around us—not just aiming to do less harm but actively seeking to do more good.

The terms environmental awareness, sustainability, and regeneration are all vulnerable to greenwashing – when a company uses these words to exaggerate their positive impact and make more sales without meaningfully improving business practices. For the sake of your company’s image and to preserve life on our planet, it’s essential to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

Why is environmental awareness important?

We are currently experiencing the dual ecological crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, which have a very real impact on people worldwide, including in the UK.

We rely on a stable climate and biodiversity for clean water to drink, liveable temperatures, food security, oxygen to breathe – and so much more.

Climate change and biodiversity loss are two sides of the same coin – each making the other worse. For example, as the climate destabilises, we see more wildfires and forests lost. As we lose forests, carbon is released from the burning trees, which increases global warming, and the lost forest can no longer absorb carbon via photosynthesis.

How to put things right

But environmental awareness isn’t just about understanding what has gone wrong – it’s also about understanding how to put things right. Although the biodiversity and climate crises are severe, there are many reasons to be hopeful.

For example, Project Drawdown analysed the top 100 solutions to reach drawdown, where we start absorbing more carbon than we release and the climate stabilises. They found that we already have all the solutions that we could possibly need to stabilise the climate, and they even worked out the bill. It would cost less to put the solutions into place than to do nothing. (Because we don’t have to pay to clean up natural disasters and pressure on hospitals is relieved, etc.).

When we become more environmentally aware, we can also understand how the solutions to the climate crises can improve human health and make our lives even more prosperous. Rather than us all having to sacrifice our comfortable lives to save the earth – we can start to understand that decisions for the planet also uplift people. For example, insulating homes can reduce energy waste and, therefore, fossil fuel usage and help us save money on energy bills. Reducing fossil fuel usage is better for the climate and our health – fossil fuel air pollution is currently the biggest killer worldwide!

By better understanding the problems and solutions to environmental issues like climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, we can become better informed and more hopeful people who are willing and able to make the world a better place.

How to be environmentally aware in the workplace

Becoming more environmentally aware in the workplace can start small. It can look like taking some training to understand better how to reduce our day-to-day impact at work or putting together a workplace coffee morning to share ideas about how our company can make a more positive impact on the environment.

Finding the most efficient way to use water and energy at work can help save the business a lot of money and be good for the planet. You could consider organising a carpool for colleagues who live in the same area or putting simple and practical measures into place, like adjusting the thermostat slightly and making sure you don’t heat the building with the windows open.

Larger companies will probably hire an external company to calculate and advise them on Scope 3 emissions. For smaller businesses, it might be more realistic and cost-effective to discuss this in-house and consider ways to work with responsible suppliers.

Benefits of environmental awareness in the workplace

Becoming more environmentally aware in the workplace can help businesses thrive.

• Genuinely green businesses can have a competitive advantage and be more appealing to customers.
• Reducing waste – whether that’s wasted water, food, electricity, or raw materials – means reduced bills and better profitability.
• Regenerative businesses can also be more appealing to employees and, therefore have a lower staff turnover – because people can find meaning in their workplace and feel part of something bigger.
• Having closer relationships with your suppliers can help future-proof your business. For example, if a catering company buys ingredients from a sustainable and local farm, it is better protected from future food supply problems affecting large supermarkets that import food from far-off places.
• You can avoid fines, legal action, and damage to your image from polluting and unsustainable business practices.
• We all need a healthy environment to thrive, and being environmentally aware in the workplace can help us contribute to a stable climate, biodiversity, and human well-being.