WHY YOU SHOULD CARE WHETHER OR NOT A BUSINESS IS ECO-FRIENDLY

You can’t save the world by yourself.

It might be a tough pill to swallow, but it’s the truth. If only one person recycles, volunteers, and donates, it doesn’t go very far. You need others to do it too.

Businesses aren't exempt from being eco-friendly, either. Using LED bulbs and recycling in the office is only the bare minimum. If they want to be truly eco-friendly, it requires a whole business overhaul. Eco-friendly businesses have products, solutions, and practices that won’t harm their environment, community, or customers. These are the reasons why you should give them your support.

When you are a customer of an eco-friendly business, things are different. They pay more attention to the effect their processes have on people and places in the community. They're proactively working toward a greener future, even if it comes at a cost to their business. Here are only a few of the reasons why you should support an eco-friendly business.

THEY SAVE RESOURCES.

Whether we want to admit it or not, we’re slowly depleting the world of natural resources. There’s a finite amount of oil, gas, coal, and other minerals to harvest from our planet. It’s increasingly important to use alternative energy sources and recycling methods if we want to protect the resources we have left.

Eco-friendly businesses are aware of this looming problem, so they recycle everything they can. Recycled materials use less natural resources than creating material from scratch. Today’s manufacturing facilities need gallons of water and tons of energy to produce a brand new product. It takes around 22 gallons of water just to make one pound of plastic. This shouldn’t happen when we can recycle and repurpose so much of the plastic we use.

At The Junkluggers, we work to recycle everything possible. When we arrive at a junk pickup, we load a client’s junk into our truck and then sort it into recyclables. People can surprisingly recycle a lot of materials. We’ve taken scrap metal, shelving, building supplies, and even large appliances to specialty recycling centers. We even compiled a full list of items that you may not be recycling already. There's a lot more that people can do to help recycle if they're more aware of the outcomes.

THEY REDUCE OUR ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT.

Most of us don’t consider the true aftereffects of our junk. We barely consider how our indifference to recycling is destroying the environment. Approximately 42 percent of Americans readily admit they don’t recycle as often they should. This fills up our landfills at a rapid rate.

Eco-friendly businesses help us limit our dependency on landfills. When we’re more conscious of what we can recycle or repurpose, we stop sending so much junk to landfills. They’ve been our solution for junk since the time of the ancient Greeks, but we can’t continue down this path if we want to reduce our environmental footprint.

Businesses who embody eco-friendly practices also help us see the value of recycling. The message of reduce, reuse, recycle is so commonplace that we sometimes forget why we do it. An eco-friendly business will use recycled or repurposed products to make sure their business operations don’t impact the environment any more than they should.

At The Junkluggers, we’re doing our part to make sure what we pick up doesn’t become waste. It’s why we’ve embraced our Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) to keep all the junk we pick up out of landfills by 2025.

THEY SUPPORT A GREATER GOOD.

When you choose an eco-friendly business, you’re supporting something greater than the company itself. You’re helping preserve the environment for future generations. It’s a wholesome approach to doing business.

Eco-friendly businesses often map their solutions toward global issues. The UN covers some of these issues in their Sustainable Development Agenda, which was adopted by world leaders in September 2015.

This list includes some of the largest issues affecting people and the environment on a global scale. They’re not easily overcome, but if more businesses turn their efforts to them, society can get closer to vanquishing them.

Many eco-friendly businesses will also have a charity aspect in their business model. We work with charity partners to distribute items to people in need. We were able to work through one of these to donate a mattress to a man with cancer who was sleeping on the floor. We were even able to donate a piano to a retirement home!

BEING ECO-FRIENDLY IS ABOUT MORE THAN SAVING THE ENVIRONMENT.

Eco-friendly businesses have a positive influence on their customers, communities, industry, and environment. And when you choose them, you’re supporting something that reaps future rewards. You’re becoming part of the solution and not the problem.

If we take the time to support eco-friendly businesses, we have a shot to collectively save the world.