06 Jan 2009

Four in five smaller firms 'going green'

Some 80 per cent of smaller businesses are looking to go green in the new year, according to a survey.

Research published by Alliance & Leicester (A&L) Commercial Bank today showed that four in five smaller firms have made changes to improve their environmental performance.

More than half of enterprises were switching off all electrical products when they are not in use, 51 per cent have invested in low-energy light bulbs and about a fifth (19 per cent) of companies have upgraded to more energy-efficient equipment, the study found.

Firms looking to improve their environmental performance further could consider green solutions like virtualisation and cloud computing, which enable firms to manage and store their data online through third-party IT service providers.

This can lead to savings in power consumption and hardware costs brought on by in-house data centres.

On the A&L survey, the group's director of business management and strategy Steve Jennings said: "With the economic downturn set to continue, businesses are looking at adopting new ways to reduce overheads and by incorporating a number of initiatives to save energy, considerable cost savings can be made."