Many businesses in the UK and Europe are being fined for contamination of land, air and water and they do not know how to respond and make the changes required that will help them reduce chemical use across the business.  The regulations are becoming tighter and the chemicals industry are having to find solutions fast, this is a great opportunity for small businesses to get a competitive edge in emerging markets.

Some simple steps to consider are:

• Research chemical free products that have little or no VOC’s (Volatile organic compounds)
• Look for Bio Based products that do not contain chemicals (they are out there) and check the Data Sheets and MSD sheets on the products to ensure ‘green’ credentials.
• Look at the most harmful chemicals that your company uses and aim to replace them first, or consider the areas where the volumes are highest in your organisation and tackle them one at a time.
• Look at the ChemSec SIN list and see which chemicals are actually harmful to people and the planet (as well as your assets, equipment and fixtures etc)
• Get linked with environmental networks and NGO’s who have a key purpose of reducing the amount of chemicals in use.
• If you use outside contractor or external companies to manage processes, procurement and purchasing then you can pass this challenge onto them.
• If you do not have an environmental statement or policy then I would get on google and search for some of the larger organisations or market leaders and use that as a starting point.
• Look at existing policies within the company and see where improvements can be made, often businesses do not look at chemical usage anywhere near enough in their own environmental policy.
• Balance up the time spent fire fighting health and safety issues, safety documentation and accidents or contamination legal pursuits against the savings you could make with chemical free processes.
• Be careful not to buy products that are not ‘green’ as there are many watered down version of chemical based products out on the market, this is due to the chemicals industries coming up with their own solutions to the challenge but does not really answer the problems.

These are just small steps that you can consider if you are running the risk of being fined for chemical use in your company… One key challenge that is brought up over and over within any business is the cost in comparison to chemicals, however this is sometimes a false economy as many of the non chemical processes can actually reduce the amount of products that you need and also reduce health and safety risks at work.

If your company is challenged by regulation on chemicals then we have many of the solutions available to you with our range of chemical free, plant based cleaning products and this is our area of expertise.

Recently we have worked with a small to medium sized businesses in the UK who will now save time on administration of REACH and COSH regulations as they are no longer using the range of chemicals that they had to in the past, there are now genuine options available to business, industry and commerce that are a true alternative to chemicals. Businesses have worked with use because:

• they can reduce risk and health and safety issues (less or no need for first aid requirements if ingested)
• they can achieve ISO 14001 status with more ease
• the company has key environmental aims which have a vision for ‘sustainable business practices’
• the business is trying to eliminate the cost of being fined for contamination of land, water and air.

Sustainable business is a cost effective option and can also greatly improve your business image and give you extra PR.  The tide is moving towards Environmentally friendly practices in business and you can be in at early stages ahead of the competition giving you the market edge.

Please feel free to post your challenges or get in touch to help reduce the chemicals used within your company.

Safe Bio Cleaning are here to help you reduce your chemical use and we are very happy to work with you and your service suppliers to get it right for your business.

Tags: environmental consultation, green business, small medium enterprises

This entry was posted on March 16, 2010 at 1:39 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in ISO 14001 environmental certification avoid fines for contamination environmental aims help for small and medium busineses by admin No Comments Yet