Moving home or office is a normal part of life, and for a rapidly growing company especially, moving might happen more often than you’d expect. But in the modern day, we’re all taking more care to ensure our purchasing choices have a minimal impact on the environment.
Personal decisions like eating plant-based diets or cycling to work are all good, but companies have a much larger impact on the environment, and so it’s important for companies to make smart decisions, even if they’re relatively small.
One way a company can make a positive impact is by moving premises in a more efficient and environmentally clean manner. After all, if you fail to take the proper care, moving an entire building worth of computer equipment, furniture, documents and more can be a hugely taxing task for the environment.
Let’s look at some of the simple steps you can take to move building without doing any unnecessary damage to the world around you:
Be Ruthless When Deciding What is Necessary
Often, during a removal process, people are stressed and overwhelmed with the amount of things that need to be done. This can make it tempting to just plough on with the task to make as much progress as possible, discouraging you from stopping and thinking about whether every aspect of what you’re doing is required.
When sorting out objects to move, take some time to think about which items are really necessary and which really aren’t - and be ruthless about it! If something is even slightly a “maybe”, or a “we haven’t used this yet but might one day”, it’s almost certainly not worth keeping. This doesn’t mean you should just throw it out, as waste is a huge environmental issue. But consider selling certain items and giving others to charities or charity shops to get rid of them quickly with less of an impact.
It might seem like a small thing, but this means less journeys for removal vans, less packaging crates, less fuel, and even makes your task quicker. Why go to all that effort to move something you might get rid of in a few months anyway?
In the case of broken computer equipment you may even be able to find someone able to repair and upcycle it. If it’s beyond repair, then at least ensure it is recycled properly.
Be Deliberate with Packaging Materials
It is easy to skip over the fact that the materials you use to move home or office have their own environmental impact. Choose reusable packaging like hiring plastic removal crates where possible. If this isn’t an option then use packaging that is either recycled and recyclable or biodegradable, or consider using items that already exist in the building such as towels, sheets and bedding, or reused delivery packaging that has come in to you.
The worst thing you can do is use a single use packaging solution like cardboard boxes without recycling them or disposing of them properly - but if you do decide to use cardboard, ensure 100% of it is recyclable and recycled. It is also worth using plastic free packaging tape, as most regular packing tape is not recyclable.
Make Fewer Polluting Journeys Where Possible
When moving a lot of items, the most environmentally damaging part of the process is likely going back and forth along the same route multiple times in a gas-chugging lorry. Consider using electric vehicles if this is a possibility. Regardless of whether it is or not, you should do everything you can to cut down the amount of journeys to as few as possible. One trick could be to get employees to take basic, lighter items such as stationery home with them and bring it back to the new office when they begin working there. Since they are already making those journeys anyway and many will be travelling via public transport, this will save a lot of items from needing to be loaded into removal vans. You can also run down food and consumable supplies in the weeks running up to moving day so that you aren’t moving a lot of items that will be replaced soon regardless.
Lastly, using an experienced courier or removal team to actually pack the removal vans will lead to fitting more items per journey, meaning less journeys overall. Trusting your internal staff to do it is a bad idea if they don’t have experience with such tasks - and will just lead to items being piled into trucks in an inefficient way.
Carbon Offset the Whole Process
There are many eco-friendly initiatives available that allow you to carbon offset the emissions let off by the vehicles used for your moving day. Whether they’re made up of tree planting initiatives, clean energy investment or something else, when combined with the above tips they can be used to dramatically reduce your impact on the environment.
Consider Using Stackable, Reusable Crates
As mentioned above, hiring stackable plastic crates can be a huge benefit over cardboard boxes, especially when it comes to environmental factors. Not only do they result in less accidental damage, but they also can be reused for decades, as well as being able to be used for other purposes or safely recycled once retired.
Here at phs Teacrate we can even provide barcode tracking for your crates, reducing the chance of losses due to crates going astray during the journey. We can also offer multiple sizes and strengths of crate to suit all types of equipment. As one of the UK’s primary suppliers of moving services to the food industry and retail industry, as well as school storage and moving, we are set up to handle sustainable moving practices on any scale, the full width and length of the UK.
To hear more about pricing or discuss what we can do to make your move go more smoothly, consider getting in touch today.