FacebookLinkedInEmail

Archive for April, 2022

How Your Small Business Can Become More Eco-Friendly

Posted by Emily Ridley

In recent years customers have become more conscious about the impact their purchases are having on the environment. If you are the owner of a small business, it is highly recommended that you evaluate the impact your business methods are having on the environment. By making any effort to do this your customers will be impressed and it will make you appear more trustworthy and respectable.

Here are some tips to help your business become more eco-friendly.

Use More Sustainable Products

The items companies purchase to ensure their workplaces function well be it printer paper, cleaning products or to-go containers can be toxic to the environment due to the processes that go into making them. 

For all those paper items commonly used, such as rolls of toilet paper and reams of printer paper, office managers can look for labelling that says it is made from post or pre-consumer waste. Recycled products such as these maintain a circular economy and reduce overall waste.

For cleaning products, there is a whole cottage industry of green cleaners that don’t include toxic chemicals, opting instead for natural ingredients that work just as well. Using these products keeps toxic ingredients out of the streams and their waste out of landfills. 

Write a sustainability page or policy

A brilliant way to share your sustainability values and efforts with both your customers and your staff is to create a sustainability policy or page and have it published on your website.

If you’re a business with many staff, a policy outlining the goals and steps to becoming more sustainable will help make sure that everyone who works at your organisation is on the same page. Your policy can literally be “Our organisation is aspiring to become eco-friendlier, here are the actions everyone in the business is required to take and the values that need to be considered when making future decisions within our business.”

If your business has a website, adding a sustainability page will help outline your values for your customers and explain what steps you’re taking to become a more conscious business.

This page can consist of a list of steps you’re both currently doing, and a list of steps your organisation is moving towards. Sustainability can be a work in progress, too as long as you’re moving in the right direction. If you don’t wish to have a whole page about your sustainability police, you can simply add a blurb or paragraph to your “About page”, “Values page” or even a blog or a post on your social media platforms.

Offer Your Employees the Opportunity to Work Remotely

Because we live in a world where it is possible for more work to be completed online, there is less need for people to be in a physical office. Remote work has taken off over the past few years, allowing employees to have work-life flexibility and substantially reducing their time spent commuting. 

Working from home has become a hugely popular lifestyle for millions of employees around the world during the covid-19 pandemic. By maintaining and expanding the number of employees working from home, emissions from commutes are greatly reduced. The less cars on the road the less emissions.

Give Your Staff Public Transport Commuter Benefits

When employees do need to be in the office, how their commute contributes to greenhouse gas emissions still can be influenced. 

Public transportation (buses, trains, vanpools) is the greenest way to commute, and companies can encourage employees to take advantage of these transport options.

Small businesses can provide employees with public transit benefits that help the environment, either directly or through their human resources (HR) software. 

To provide these benefits directly, many city transit agencies offer subsidized passes for businesses. Alternately, these benefits may be available to add through HR software that centralizes all benefit programs.

Encourage Your Employees and Customers to Make Environmentally Friendly Purchases

Many car companies are encouraging their employees to go electric when choosing a new car. Many businesses are incentivising employees to buy an electric car by providing them with a monthly voucher covering a portion of their lease or finance payment. Some businesses are encouraging carpooling to and from the office. Some businesses have switched to all LED lighting in their offices and have installed solar panels to offset their energy usage.

Tips For Making More Money in The Share Economy

Posted by Emily Ridley

Thanks to the advancements of digital technology having multiple sources of income and having a number of different side hustles to support yourself has never been easier. The share economy is allowing people from all over the world to make extra money on top of their normal 9 to 5 job. Here are some ways Australians can take advantage of the share economy and make extra money.

Airbnb

Airbnb is a significantly popular way for Australians to make additional income on the side. With this in mind it is important to think about and look out for a number of tax implications associated with Airbnb.

Airbnb provides Australians with a fantastic opportunity to rent out that spare room without the long-term commitment. It can also be a handy way to lease a holiday home that would be quiet for much of the year.

Rent Out Your Pool

Making sure that your pool remains sparkling and algae-free certainly isn’t a cheap process however there’s a way to get these backyard swimming spots earning their keep.

Some people are making anywhere between $5,000 and $10,000 a month or $30,000 a year by letting people rent out their pool on a platform called Swimply.

Rent out Your Garage or Shed

Empty sheds or garages can also be rented out via a platform called Spacer. Help a hoarder out and earn around $400 a month, or potentially around $4,800 a year.

Spacer can be best described as is an online marketplace for self-storage. The platform was founded in 2015 and based in Sydney. Spacer allows people to rent excess space to other people. Spacer has similar features to Airbnb and ride-sharing apps.

Uber and Other Rideshare Apps

Uber has become a popular way for Australians to earn additional income. However, drivers can find themselves potentially getting into serious tax related problems unless they do it right.

The concept of being an Uber driver is unique and gives drivers a flexible opportunity to earn additional income for anyone who owns a good quality car.

Other popular Rideshare apps available in Australia include; Didi and Ola.

There is also a rideshare app called Shebah. Shebah brands itself as the only all-woman rideshare company in Australia. The purpose of Shebah is to offer safe and secure rides for women by women. Women, women with children, and men travelling with kids are permitted to ride. Men aren’t allowed to ride shotgun via Shebah.

Rent Out Undercover Car Spots

For the past 12 months, Charlotte Ward has been renting out two undercover car spots at her home in Bondi Junction in Sydney’s eastern suburbs for $240 a month via a platform called Parkhound.

She says that the extra $480 she makes each motnhs month allowed her and her housemate, who both don’t drive, to leverage the extra earnings they made through Parkhound to snag a better rental than they would otherwise have been able to afford.

It can be revealed that people renting out their empty car spaces on the app earn on average $300 a month, or $3,600 a year.

Ward is no stranger to the sharing economy. Back in the days of overseas travel, she used to rent out her room on Airbnb to help fund her trips.

“I think people can make extra money just from the existing assets that they have that they might not realise,” says Charlotte Ward.

Take Care of Someone’s Dog or Cat

Another way to make money via the share economy is to look after someone’s pet dog or cat when they are on holidays.

This can be done by signing up to a service called Mad Paws. Mad Paws can be best described as a Pet Sitting service through which a pet care professional minds your dog, cat, puppy, bird, or other pet.

All depending on the preferences of the Pet Owner, Pet Sitting can occur either at the owner’s house or at the sitter’s house.

In the case of the former, pet sitters can offer pet house sitting, by which they mind your home and your pet. Pet sitting can span for as long as the pet owner needs, from overnight to months at a time. Pet Sitting is also sometimes known as Dog Boarding, Cat Boarding, or Pet Boarding.

Emerge Advisory