Copyright (c) 2010 Alison Withers

As part of demonstrating corporate social responsibility (CSR) many businesses these days like to emphasis how environmentally friendly they are.

There are plenty of ways to make a business premises more environmentally friendly. They include recycling all re-usable waste, like paper and glass, using biodegradable packaging, having staff bring in cups or mugs for tea or coffee rather than using plastic throw-away cups, trying to cut down on paper use by not printing out unessential documents and by communicating as much as possible by email, remembering to switch off lights and computers when not in use and perhaps encouraging employees to car share.

There is, however, another way to cut energy use and reduce the carbon footprint that perhaps businesses have not considered.

If your business needs to keep paper records of customer or client information, which can be a legal requirement for organisations like health authorities, residential homes, solicitors, accountants and will writers, how and where are they being stored?

All paper records cannot necessarily be converted to a digital version. It could eat up hours of staff time that might be better focused on the day's business activity. It may also not be practical to do it for older, historic records that have a legal validity only in their original form or may not conform to modern standardised paper sizes.

However, it is worth considering how much floor space is being used within the business premises because it is additional space that has to be lit and perhaps also heated. As businesses are now required to record their energy and emission use it could cut the energy use by consolidating it all and storing it off site in a centralised self-store facility.

It is not only business archiving that can be centrally stored to reduced the carbon footprint.

We know of an e-business in Ipswich, UK, that sells all its products online and keeps its stock in a self-store facility. Its owner says it means using less space, and therefore less energy, keeping its carbon footprint to a minimum.

Similarly, a children's centre in the town has a vast collection of donated toys for both indoor and outdoor use. Keeping the surplus in a self-store facility means that outdoor play equipment can be protected in the winter, prolonging its useful life, and indoor play equipment can be rotated to allow for repairs and cleaning and also to ensure that there are regularly new ranges of toys to keep the children stimulated.

There are other advantages to centralising storage. It helps to declutter the office and it is possible to install shelving or racking for stock and equipment, or filing systems for archiving, in a self store unit to make it easy for the business to access anything it needs quickly.

Rented self-storage facilities themselves contribute to energy efficiency since most self store units have heat or motion sensitive lighting indoors and for outside security.

Using a centraliserd self-store unit can therefore give a business not only environmental but financial benefits.