COMPANY SUSTAINABILITY POLICY

Sustainability consists of fulfilling the needs of current generations without compromising the needs of future generations, while ensuring a balance between economic growth, environmental care and social well-being.

After the sustainability analysis in our company, through my observation method I have actually found out that the company sustainable level is low and this has greatly affected the company development and image.

This has driven me to finding the best solution for the sustainability practises for our company.

• 0bjectives 0f us practicing sustainability in our company;
• Prosperity

Prosperity is one of the most important objectives of sustainable development management. It is about improving or at least preserving the world for future generations. Many efforts need to be made and they are in line with all the principles of sustainable development.

• Peace

Peace between all countries of the world is to everyone’s advantage. It is through sustainable development management at the international level that you can contribute to maintaining peace in our country and in others. This can only have positive impacts, especially on the country economy.

• The well-being of the people

In order to keep the nation in harmony and to maintain peace in our country, it is necessary to ensure the well-being of the people. There are many steps that can be taken to do this. This includes ensuring that all country respect human rights and establish equality. This is one of the most important objectives of sustainable practice in our company.

• Partnerships

The application of sustainable development management strategies requires the support of companies. They can effectively create partnerships between them, whether at the national or international level. In this way, they contribute to achieving some of the sustainability management objectives already mentioned above.

• Preservation of the planet

It is in this branch that you can classify all the measures taken to protect and restore the environment. It is also about preserving natural resources, especially those that are non-renewable and whose disappearance or extraction can cause severe damage to the environment.

Preserving the planet is also about implementing proposed remedial measures to address climate change that affects the entire world.

• Goal of practicing sustainability in the company are as follow;
• Flexible work arrangements.
• Promoting work-life balance.
• Investing in employee training and development.
• Ensuring fair and equitable compensation and benefits.
• Developing the local communities

These sustainability policies are to help us ensure the best practises for the company reputation and growth.

These are as follow;

• Sustainable commute;

here the company is to ensure that the workers those who come from far should practice the use of public means of transport like vehicles, buses and bicycles as this reduces costs and ensures savings for both the company and the contributes to the economic development of the country hence sustainability.

• Paperless work place;
• The company is to ensure that the office workers are to adopt to the paperless working area, and this is to be done through ensuring that the sharing of documents internally within the office area or externally outside the office from the clients are to be sent online or soft copy but not had copy.
• The company is to reduce or eliminate the printing machines at the work place to completely abolish paper work at the work place as this also reduces energy usage at the company.
• The company is to also practice both sided printing on a paper, if one was to print data on one shit then he or she should print on both sides of the paper hence practice of sustainability at the work place.
• The itineraries should be made and sent online or through emails to the clients than making hard copy as this ensures a paperless environment.
• Go virtual;
• We are to go virtual in office that is all meeting at the work place should be hold online by the use of google meetings, zoom meetings.
• The company workers should also resort to communication via emails and WhatsApp as this reduces movements at the work place.
• Itineraries are to be sent to clients online or virtually to reduce costs and over working.
• The company is also resorting to virtual tourism as this ensure savings over costs and expenditures that the company is likely to face
• Think where the company staff are eating from;
• The company is to resort to packed lunch as this reduces over movements that are to cause pollution hence well standards of the staff welfare.
• The company should also practice the buying of food from the locals as this ensures social support hence improving the people’s standards of living.

The company is to ensure that the workers are enjoying the fruits at the work place as this improves their health.

Shop local.

• Buy fruits, vegetables, and snacks from local farmers markets or have a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box with fresh food delivered to the office!
• Avoid using plastic cutlery.
• Buy metal or reusable cutlery and ditch single use plastics.
• Use eco-friendly cleaning products.
• This applies to your home and work office. Many common cleaning products are indoor pollutants that are dangerous for the environment as well as human health. Purchase environmentally friendly hand soaps and cleaning sprays that do not have harmful and/or toxic chemicals.
• Say goodbye to bottled water.
• The doctor doesn’t require your daily 8 glasses of water to be from the bottle. Purchase a reusable water bottle or a water purifier for the office that can filter tap water. These will both eliminate your dependence on plastic bottles and keep them out of the landfills.

• Turn off lights;
• At the company if machines like printers, computers, laptops are not in use or are not being used should be shut down or switched off.
• The workers should switch off bulb lights when leaving offices after work and also during day as this ensures energy savings and cost savings for the company hence sustainability.
• During broad day light the office windows should widely be opened to allow the use of light hence not using electric energy during day and also to allow the fresh air into the work place.
• Supply chain management;
• Consider where the company is spending its money, the company should make contracts with the suppliers and failure for the supplier to reach its terms the contract should be terminated, and still when the contract period is done ensure new contract with new suppliers hence social support.
• The company should also practice the company payments it be to its suppliers, workers and from customers there should be a sustainable paying process and these are banking, mobile money, credit cards.
• Go green office;
• Workers should not leave the charges in the sockets after charging.
• The workers or staffs should not use beyond excess charging to reduce energy usage.
• Use of document materials but not hard copies.
• Do not use disposable cutlery in the office e.g. plastic glasses, plates.
• Use of electric signatures

Implement a comprehensive recycling program

• While your office is likely recycling its paper and plastics, you can take recycling to the next level by expanding your program to include glass and metals. If your local municipality doesn’t have recycling streams for glass and metals, reach out to waste management companies. These companies often will weigh your recycling before taking it to facilities, making it easy to track and report to stakeholders the amount of waste you’re diverting from landfills.
• Use no-voc interior paints
• Commonly found in many paints and other home maintenance products, VOCs are persistent chemical compounds that evaporate into the air. When airborne VOCs are inhaled, they can cause irritation, headache and more serious side effects on the liver, kidney and central nervous system. And since most VOCs are odorless, their threat goes unnoticed.

Go with no-VOC paints to protect employee health and limit airborne pollution. Smog Armor is a company that specializes in no-VOC paints, making them a great choice for your office’s new healthy coat of paint.

• Allow flexible work-from-home options
• Allowing employees to work from home – even if it’s one day a week – can result in major decreases in your employee’s commute emissions. Also, most businesses have found through the COVID-19 pandemic that many employees want a flexible work schedule, meaning this is sure to be a popular move.
• Achieve sustainable business practices through zero waste break rooms
• Traditional offices generate a lot of waste in their break rooms. This is a drain on resources and can leave your employees feeling like they aren’t doing their part for the environment. Zero waste break rooms can be achieved by:

• Offering reusable mugs and cups instead of disposables,
• Implementing a composting program for food scraps,
• Replacing plastic cutlery and stir-sticks with biodegradable options (wooden, bio-plastics, etc.)
• If your office uses coffee pods, choose biodegradable pods such as those from One Coffee.
• Install water-saving fixtures
• Limiting your office’s water use is another area where cost-savings and sustainability go hand-in-hand. You can conserve water in the office by installing Water Sense faucets and toilets in bathrooms and rain-sensing sprinkler systems in the green space outside your office. Making this change requires some investment, but payback time is short – and will become even shorter as water scarcity causes the cost of water to increase.

• Replace unnecessary business trips with video calls
• Today everyone in the office is eager to travel as COVID-19 restrictions ease, it has become evident in the pandemic that much of the business travel we used to deem essential really isn’t. With the rising popularity of video calling and virtual conferences, many meetings, trade shows, and similar events can be done virtually from the office. Unnecessary business trips are a major drain on company resources, employee time, and are one of the biggest contributors to a company’s carbon footprint. We can save these costs and emissions by instituting an “essential travel only” policy at your workplace.
• Install motion-sensors for office lighting
• A large number of rooms with lights on but nobody in them. Wasting energy like this hurts your company’s pocketbook and the environment. Install motion-sensors in your offices to limit energy usage and save money.
• For the simplest and cheapest way to conserve energy from lighting, simply post signs next to light switches reminding employees to shut the lights off when they leave a room. Being mindful of energy use habits is the simplest of all sustainable business practices, and often, a little nudge in the right direction is all that’s needed.
• Flexible dress code
• Allowing men to wear shorts on hot days and women to wear pants in the cold climate can significantly reduce the need to use your office’s climate control system.
• Another green benefit that comes from moving toward a more flexible dress code is that employees will have to do less dry-cleaning. As dry-cleaning consumes large amounts of water and uses chemical cleansers and dyes, reducing the need for it can make your office much eco-friendlier.
• Eliminate phantom power with programmable power strips
• Phantom power is energy that’s consumed when devices are left on or in stand-by mode when they’re not in use. It can significantly boost your office’s power bill and carbon footprint.
• An effective way to put an end to phantom power use in your office is by investing in programmable power strips that automatically stop supplying devices with power in non-working hours or when employees are on vacation.
• Introduce plants into your office space
• Having plants in the office has been proven to decrease air pollution and increase the mood and productivity of employees. Thus, this is a cheap and easy practice that can improve employees’ long-term commitment and output.
• Buy second-hand office equipment when possible
• Buying second-hand equipment decreases waste going to landfill, makes producing new equipment unnecessary, and can save your business a lot of money simultaneously. This is not always possible for products that degrade quickly or become obsolete like computers – but for generic, durable equipment like desks and cabinets, opt for second-hand.
• Eliminate all non-recyclable practices;
• Polyethene bags should be abolished at the work place.
• Plastics it can be bags and cups.
• Eco friendly snacks;
• The company workers should avoid the buying of packed snacks in polyethene in the company and resort to local foods and fruits like sweet banana, apples as this improves their health and their peals can easily decompose.
• Use less energy;
• The workers in the company should ensure lights off when not in use.
• Shut off of computers.
• Machines off if not in use.
• Use stairs instead of elevators as this saves energy costs.
• Use re-usable utensils;
• Here the company is to use re-usable cups, plates.
• During the meeting instead of buying and using plastic bottle they should resort to the use of glasses when taking water during the meeting.
• Instead of buying Rwenzori water bottles the company is to resort to water cool hence sustainability.
• Waste management;
• The company workers should take note of where to dump wastes, a permanent wooden dust bin should be provided in the office hence proper garbage disposal.

• Ensure favourable employees working terms and conditions
• The basics of employee satisfaction lie in decent employment terms and conditions.

• Free choice of trade union membership
• A fair salary (commission, incentives)
• Maternity and holiday leave
• Liability and medical insurance
• Respect of each other at the work place
• Clean working environment
• Rewarding and appreciating those who perform better.
• Rest periods
• Day off work for workers
• Safe working environment
• Workers health status. (insurance)
• Welfare

Train and reward your customer

• Competent and happy customers are worth far more than you might think. Make sure they know what they are buying and reward them for doing supporting your company as this promotes customer royalty and also prevent complaints from coming up happening, keep track of any past problems and communication to learn from in the future.
• Engage Stakeholders

• Employees, customers, suppliers, and the wider community
• Communicate their progress transparently.
  • Establishing partnerships with other organizations
  • Engaging with customers on social media and other platforms
  • Hosting events and initiatives that promote sustainability and engage the community
• Embrace Sustainable Innovation

• Developing new products and services that address sustainability challenges, as well as improving existing products and services to make them more sustainable.
  • Investing in research and development, collaborating with partners to develop new technologies and processes, or exploring new business models that are more sustainable.
• Introducing sustainable materials
• Measure and Report Progress

• track key sustainability metrics, such as carbon emissions, water usage, and waste production
• Involve stakeholders in the review of data
• Utilizing technology to gather accurate and reliable data
• Prioritize Employee Well-Being and Mental Health
• Creating a more sustainable and equitable workplace that can lead to greater employee satisfaction, retention, and productivity.
  • Flexible work arrangements
  • Promoting work-life balance
  • Investing in employee training and development
  • Ensuring fair and equitable compensation and benefits

Increase productivity and reduce costs.

• Detractors of sustainability claim that sustainable business practices eat into corporate profit. Development of sustainable business practices lends itself to efficient operation that streamlines effort and conserves resources, which enhances employee productivity and reduces cost.
• Reducing cost also encompasses energy conservation strategies that can be as simple as turning off unnecessary lights and insulating walls to more sophisticated efforts such as installation of geothermal heating and cooling systems. Those efforts having greater overall impact will likely be more expensive to implement, but the long-term results justify the investment.

Attract employees and investors.

• People like to be associated with the positive, especially younger generations raised on a steady diet of environmental protection messages. They do not want to be linked to companies implicated in ecological disasters and social welfare scandals. Show your company as respectful of the environment and of its employees and it will attract the caliber of people whom you want to employ and the funds your business needs to expand.

Reduce waste.

• This is likely the simplest and most obvious way to engage in sustainable practices. Beginning in the 1990s with offices collecting empty cans for recycling, the effort has grown to encompass waste mitigation in paper (conserving trees and forest habitats), value engineering of products (reworking or developing new processes that use less raw materials, waste less material in production of goods), to changing out incandescent lights for LED lights (greater efficiency combined with fewer bulbs used).

Make shareholders happy.

• Not only can sustainability be used to lower costs, but it can result in increasing profit and hence unity among stakeholders.