It is vital that businesses of all sizes and in all industries find ways to be greener in 2021. Environmental damage is an enormous issue right now, and consumers are becoming increasingly eco-conscious, so becoming greener is important for reducing your impact as well as improving your brand reputation and attracting people to your business. On top of this, you should find that becoming greener could also help to lower your operating costs too. With all of this in mind, read on for a few of the best ways that you can make your business greener in 2021 and beyond.
- Energy-Efficient Equipment
One of the best ways to reduce your impact as well as lower your costs is to switch to energy-efficient equipment. This will be at a cost upfront, but you can make big savings over the long-term, plus it will not negatively affect your daily operation in any way, so it is a win-win situation.
- Remote Work
There were clear signs of the environment healing itself when most of the world switched to remote work in 2020, plus this can bring a range of benefits to both staff and the business, so it should certainly be considered moving forward. It has environmental benefits because it means that there are fewer cars on the road as a result of your business, plus employees will not be consuming energy at your company.
- Cycle To Work Scheme
Following this point, when staff do come into work, you should encourage the cycle to work tax scheme with Cycle Solutions. This is a scheme that helps your business to reduce its NI contributions by 13.8% of the value of the equipment supplied while employees benefit from paying less for a new bike and cycling equipment. When your employees are cycling into work instead of driving, it will make your business much greener, keeps your employees in good shape, and could help to lift morale amongst a range of other benefits.
- Paperless Office
Another highly effective way to make your business greener while reducing your costs is to become a paperless office. This will eliminate the need for both paper and printing, plus you also have the benefits of lower costs, more storage space, and documents being much easier to find when you have a digital filing system in place.
- Use Green Suppliers
It is also important to look at the businesses that you work with and to make sure that the supply chain is also green. It is when this happens that real change can be seen, and your reputation as a green company will shine through, especially if you are also using local suppliers as a way to limit transport and to support the local economy.
As you can see, there are lots of effective ways for a business to become greener, and this can bring a range of benefits. Now is the time for action, and businesses will be able to improve their reputation and lower costs when they take action to reduce their environmental impact.
None of us wishes to fail in the businesses we launch. Our ultimate goal of starting a business is success and prosperity. It does not matter how long we have been in the industry, whether we are beginning a new venture or have been a business owner for decades. We are all brought together by a strong desire to succeed in our businesses and the opportunities available.
For the last decade, I have worked closely with several small business owners. I learned that there are particular principles that they abide by which make great contribution to their success. These principles are the driving forces in business that can make or break our ventures. Various details vary from one industry to the other, or from one business owner to another. The following seven principle elements will be very significant to all industries.
The Leadership
To attain success, we need to have the right team working with us in our businesses. Everything in the business will always run smoothly and comfortably when everything is right at the leadership level. As business owners, we should strive to have the best leadership skills and styles. This will make us become good leaders in our businesses. If we don't have the leadership skills, the adverse effects will trickle down and be experienced throughout our businesses. This will definitely have a notable impact on the company and our profits as well.
Marketing
In a business, marketing is considered one of the most critical aspects. It is why people look to so many methods, through companies like First Page Digital Hong Kong or through their own marketing departments. Currently, the internet is one of the most incredible resources we have. We should strive to always have well-designed websites that will help us to reach out to our target clients and generate more sales for our business worldwide with ease and inexpensively. We should ensure we have a top search engine rank, which will vastly improve our local deals.
Productivity
We all know that time is money. For our ventures to be successful, we must maximize our time and focus on the right things. I have seen several small business owners striving to embrace new technology, which has often been very rewarding. I would advise any business owners looking to adopt any technology, such as incorporating software that reduces administrative work and starts using better equipment. This will significantly help your business to stay ahead of the game and enable things to run smoothly.
Customer Aspect
In any business, the customer is an essential factor. The key to a successful business is the ability to have loyal existing customers. To turn repeat customers into loyal customers, we need to look after their needs and wants. We can resolve this by setting up a 24/7 customer care line to ensure all their queries and complaints are solved promptly. Online, several guides will help us learn how to retain and attract new customers.
Competition
Even if we have the best products in the market, our business may experience a downward spiral if we fail to acknowledge our competitors. This is in terms of pricing and improving our product to avoid customers going for substitute products. We also need to understand the industry and the key players in the market to plan our business strategies effectively. This will make our business stand out from the rest, and we can be assured of success.
Organizational Structure and Design
We need to understand how successful businesses operate and run their businesses. This could be from the departments' primary structure within the business, to the personnel and how to manage various projects. Through interactions with several business owners, I have learned to effectively and efficiently run a business. We need to know everything about the organizational structures and design of the specific industries we are in.
Financing
When starting a business, we need to have an excellent financial base. It is also vital to ensure that our businesses have a positive cash flow as it grows and develops. The business will always need adequate finances to pay the employees, vendors, and bills to ensure its sustainability. When our businesses can sustain themselves, it will be effortless for us to manage the cash flow wisely and, in return, get profits.
Interior design is often at the forefront of every homeowner’s mind; however, the exterior of a property should not be neglected. Not only because it can improve curb appeal, but the exterior also has many functional aspects that need to be kept up.
If you can’t remember the last time you picked up a rake or inspected your roof, then you have some work to do. Now’s the time to get on it and make the exterior of your home look fantastic!
The roof
The roof is perhaps one of the most important parts of a property but also the most neglected. Often, because it’s not something we check or see every day, its maintenance can sometimes slip our minds. However, as it has such an essential role in keeping the property and its contents safe, it’s vital that it gets the attention it needs. Inspect the roof and ensure that everything is intact. There should be no moss or ivy, as these can hold water, causing significant water damage. Also, check that there are no missing shingles or rips in the roof fabric as these can let the elements in as well as pests. If you spot some of these problems, you need to call the best roofing contractor northern va has ever seen right away and resolve these issues! The longer these issues are left, the more likely it is that they will develop into significant damage, such as water damage or a roof that needs replacing. Additionally, a damaged roof can significantly impact the curb appeal of a home as well as the property value.
The gutters
Gutters are an integral part of any home. They stop water from gathering on the roof and allow it to drain safely. This avoids water damage on the roof and down the sides of the property, where the water would run down. Gutter maintenance is pretty simple. Checks just need to be made to ensure that the gutters aren’t blocked or cracked. If they are blocked, water can pool on the roof, and if they are cracked, water can leak down the side of the property and into the foundation. None of this is ideal and can severely damage the integrity of a home. Not only that, but the water damage marks don’t look great and can make a property look weathered. Thankfully, the checking of gutters is simple, and there are even gutter cleaning services that can be used to keep them clear. They only need to be checked annually or after any extreme weather conditions.
The lawn
Curb appeal is a huge factor when maintaining a home. A freshly cut lawn looks excellent, and it’s great for surrounding plants and trees too. If you want your landscape to thrive, maintaining the lawn is essential. This is because when a lawn is left unattended, it can become overgrown, blocking the light to other plants as well as sucking up all the nutrients. Lawns can also produce unsightly weeds that can damage other plants, as well as fungi. Although fungi aren’t always detrimental to the landscape, in some cases they can be. Finally, a maintained lawn means the lawn can’t hold onto water when it rains, preventing soil erosion.
The foundation
Similarly to the roof, the home’s foundation stops elements and pests from getting into the property. Without it, anything could make its way into the house and cause damage. To avoid this, twice a year take a walk around your property and check for any cracks. If you notice any, this could be the start of corrosion and you need to get it fixed right away. If left unattended, the outcomes could be catastrophic. Again, there are professionals that can help with this, so you don’t have to do it alone.
Your home should be a place where you feel comfortable and can relax. You don’t want to have to worry about long term maintenance or future problems. So, if you follow these tips, you can put your mind at ease and ensure everything is looked after!
Background
Many people at home or work have old Pentium PCs not doing much, the majority of these PCs are perfectly useful with the right software on. I'm going to take a look at what I can do with my old PC in the way of setting up a few different Linux distributions to make it into a word processor and networked PC.
The PC I will be using is a Compaq Deskpro with the following specification:
Pentium 166 Processor
96 MB?s of RAM
1.9gig Hard Drive
3com network card
CD drive
Floppy Drive
On board graphics
The network card is connected to my main network with an Internet gateway.
In the past I have used the PC as an IP COP firewall, a Windows 2000 server and an Apache web server. In this case I have decided to set it up as a Linux based word processor with either Gnome or ICEWM as the windows manager and abiword as a word processor. I will also install a web browser, in most cases either Nautilus or Mozilla depending on what the different distributions have available.
I did consider OpenOffice but after deep consideration I thought it would be too slow on the old pc and I would only really be using the word processor. The PC has to run at a reasonable speed and the number of errors must be kept to a minimal! I will try as many distributions as possible including the big names such as Red Hat, SuSE and Mandrake.
SuSE
Website: here
The first distribution I tried was SuSE, I use SuSE on my main computer and in all honesty its one of my favourite distributions. I have copies of SuSE 7.2, 8 and 8.1 so I thought I would try 8.1 first. My first task was to create boot floppy disks because unluckily my computer doesn't boot from the CD. This was an easy task as all the files needed are available on SuSE's ftp server.
SuSE has to be one of the easiest distributions to install and all seemed to be going well on the 166 until it came to formatting then coping files across to the hard drive. The installer would come to copy files and would then freeze, I tried 8.1 three times with different partitions and package selections, each time the PC would freeze at around the same place.
Ironically the screen that the installer froze on stated that SuSE was ?easy and stable?.
Next I decided to install 8.0 as 8.1 didn't want to install however I had the same problems again with the installer freezing when it came to copy files across. I considered the problem being the partitioning it was doing but after trying EXT2, EXT3 and ReiserFS I moved on to SuSE 7.2.
This installed fine and after a nerve-racking installation I was asked to configure X. This is where I had more problems, I knew that the screen and graphics could take 800*600 at 16bit colour and that the vertical range of the screen was 50-60hz but SuSE wouldn't take it! After messing about with the setting a bit I managed to get it to work in 800*600 at 256colors but this just made everything look horrible.
I managed to install Gnome, abiword and Mozilla without any problems and they worked fine however trying to look at any web page looked dreadful because of the lack of colours.
Overall I wasn't too impressed with SuSE on my 166 compared to my main PC and it was pretty clear that SuSE is aiming its products at PCs with a bit more power.
Debian 3
Website: here
Next on the list was Debian, I had never used Debian before so it was a bit of a new experience. Don?t ask why I decided to try Debian on the 166 it was just a hunch to try it. I didn't have Debian ISO images on CD so I was going to try the network install from the net.
After downloading 2 floppy disks and a small driver CD I was ready to go. I booted from the floppy and the installer detected that I had modules on the CD this made setting up the network card and configuring the network easy. The installer then downloaded a few base system modules from the net (took about 20mins on my ADSL) and installed them without any problems.
After rebooting it loaded up Debian's package managers, the first is called Tasksel which gave you a few basic categories to install, I selected to install X and it then loaded up a package manager called dselect, this listed every single package I could install and it took ages to select the ones I needed! However it did sort out all of the dependencies brought up by selecting different packages.
After going through a few thousand packages it downloaded and started configuring everything. It loaded Debconf and asked a few simple questions about X and whether I wanted Debconf to set it up for me, obviously I pressed yes.
The system then brought up the login prompt and started ICEWM in 800*600 at 16bit and everything worked fine. I was surprised how well things worked compared to my experience with SuSE and to be honest it was a perfectly useable word processor and net access system.
Red Hat 8
Website: here
I didn?t have much luck to start with when it came to installing Red Hat the stylish interface of the Red Hat installer booted up fine and everything went fine until it came to installing where I got an error message stating ?install exited abnormally? it was in a similar place to what happened in SuSE 8.0 and 8.1 so I can only guess my computer must have a problem!
Without wanting to give up so soon I decided to try the non graphical version of the installer however I got an error in the same place as before but this time I got a nice log too!
If anyone can work out what the following log is about let me know:
Mandrake 9
Website: here
After SuSE and Red Hat both not installing on the 166 I was optimistic whether it was worth trying Mandrake. I haven?t used Mandrake for about a year so I was keen to see what Mandrake 9 had to offer compared to previous versions. I spent 10 hours downloading the ISO images yet I had the same problem as in SuSE and Red Hat when it came to installing. However I wasn?t going to give up so I decided to try the network install.
After spending a further 3 hours downloading and installing, everything was going well until it asked me to configure my X server, unlike Debian or SuSE it didn?t auto-configure leaving me to try to work out what my setting were. Luckily in this case I knew what they were and entered the details I thought to be correct.
I rebooted but it couldn?t initialise the X server, I tried about 5 times with different parameters in the xf86config but it wouldn?t have it. Either my p166s onboard graphics wasn?t supported or I was putting something in wrong.
At this point I gave up going any further and decided to call it a week when it came to trying different distributions on my 166.
Conclusion
Out of the 4 distributions I tested over the last week Debian installed the least with about 400mbs of packages while SuSE and Red Hat wanted to install over 1gig of packages. For the smaller hard drive the less to install is clearly better so Debian won here.
Debian also won for overall distribution to work properly and install easily. SuSE and Red Hat both install fine on my Pentium 4 2gig but on my p166 they didn?t shine through as much. I was a bit surprised that Debian did so well considering I had no prior experience of the distribution and had relatively good experience with Red Hat and SuSE.
I was a bit surprised with Mandrake that it didn?t automatically setup X considering Mandrake is well known for its simplicity. Debian on the other hand was the only distribution to setup X first time without any problems, this was also surprising because I always thought Debian was more of a techie distribution.
I have learnt that my p166 seems to have some sort of hardware conflict that seems to stop the newer versions of SuSE and Red Hat from installing.
From my personal experience it seems that Debian has won the test of best distribution for a word processor on a p166 and I will be leaving it on the machine for the near future.
If you have any personal experiences of good distributions for older computers sign up to ImAFish and post your comments below.
[Last edited on February 11, 2003 at 8:05:22pm by pwhite]
When it comes to our kitchen, we all want the best kitchen cabinets that we can find. Our search should lead us to ones that are pleasing to look at, well made, and functional. It is, after all, the room in the house where we most need to save space, as it is where many of our appliances and gadgets reside.
We shall consider below the main reasons why kitchen cabinets are bought, replaced, and improved upon.
Save Space
The number one reason why we have cabinets in our kitchen will be for storage. By fitting them closely together, less space is wasted. They will also be placed in convenient places so that we can access the cooking utensils and foodstuffs that we need. To accommodate enough cabinets, they will often be above as opposed to below or to the side.
The strategic way that shelving is placed within a kitchen cabinet and the use of hooks can make effective use of their storage space. You will be able to have different-sized cabinets depending on the size of the items that you want to store. For instance, the cabinet will need to be able to accommodate the height of a cereal packet if you want those to hand in your kitchen ready for breakfast. It is the meal that we all tend to eat in a rush, so as not to be late starting work.
For items that do not need to be stored out of sight or kept so clean, you can use tops and windowsills, and pelmets. It is only really, though, the aesthetic pleasers or gadgets such as juicers that should be on show. For example, antique copper jelly moulds make a nice aesthetic pleaser. For safety’s sake, it is also a good idea to keep knives inside the drawers. It always makes me cringe seeing them in a rack on a work surface. With the drawers of kitchen cabinets, they can be hidden away from curious role-playing children.
Convenience
When we are cooking, we want everything to hand. All the utensils that we need should be gathered in one area so that we do not waste time looking for them. It can rather take the fun away from cooking if we have to hunt around too much for them.
In terms of their positioning, you will normally find that the knobs on the high kitchen cabinets are placed on the opposite side of the hinges and between 2.5 and 3 inches from the bottom corner of the door. With base cabinets, the knobs will be the same distance from the upper corner. Where drawers are 24 inches, very often a second knob will be fitted. You do not have to worry about any of this, though, because when you order kitchen cabinets, they can come with the knobs that you select as your preferred choice. They do add a nice finishing touch to kitchen cabinets. They need to be as practical as they are pleasing to look at because they will be used frequently to open the cupboards. Particularly with the high cabinets, you will want them to be easy to open and not have to struggle with their catch.
Hygiene
It is hygienic to house inside a cupboard the utensils that are going to be preparing food so that they are stored away from dust and germs.
When cleaning out cupboards, vinegar makes a good natural cleaner that you can use. If you mix a 50/50 solution of warm water and vinegar, you can pour it into a spray bottle to use. You can then mist it onto cabinets, let it settle for a minute, and then wipe away the grease that has accumulated over time with just a soft cloth.
We could include the aesthetic appearance of kitchen cabinets here, too, but that would not be the reason why we had them in the first place. They are needed for storage. Just to say something about it, though, they do add appeal to a kitchen when natural woods and superior grain looks are used. There is nothing like a matching set of handles to show that your kitchen means business and has been decorated to a high standard. Also, there are add-ons you can buy to enhance your kitchen cabinets.
To sum up, kitchen cabinets will provide us storage places, make sure items are always to hand, and be a hygienic way of accommodating many of the items that are housed in our kitchen.