Reduce, reuse, recycle (In business).

It sounds simple enough, and in reality it actually is simple.

In todays business climate, we aren't just buying and selling things locally. Although we should try to where we can, online culture has provided us a with wealth of options at our fingertips. Whether it's buying reference books on Amazon, purchasing the new Raspberry Pi or even doing our grocery shopping online, we can get almost anything we want by the click of a button. Now, whether or not this immediacy is a good or bad thing isn't what I'm going to talk about. That's up for your own interpretation. I want to talk about the baggage, or packaging that comes along with these things we buy. 

At KRS Design, we send our products all over the country, and even internationally. A practice that we've had in place for years now is to re-use our packaging we receive when we order our parts that we use to manufacture our high quality original equipment. When we send out our equipment, it's packed securely, very securely. However breaking the laws of branding is something we do on a daily basis. We did away with boxes containing our logo years ago. For us, what's inside the box is what is important and what we take most pride in. We also take pride in the fact that we re-use all of the packaging we receive, and very rarely have to buy it. We have a section of our factory dedicated to storing packaging and boxes of various sizes and shapes so that we can re-use them when sending out our products. 

We've been a small business operating out of the South Coast of New South Wales since 1985. There are times we send out significantly large orders, and times that we send out a small repair job to one of our many valued customers. No job is too large or small. If you are reading this and are one of our customers you have probably received your items in a recycled box packed with recycled packaging. Many of our customers will also recycle the packaging we send to them.

For instance when we sell an EMU Spirit Dispenser and send it to a customer, it could be years until we hear from them. Which is what we pride ourselves on with the EMU in particular, as we design, manufacture and rigorously test our products in-house. However, there will be times when the EMU will require a service, repair and re-verification to the national standard, which is also another facet of our business. When we receive the the EMU for repair, many times our customers have held on to the original packaging and sent the EMU to us packed up almost identical to how we sent it out. The only requirement is that you have the space to store your packaging. We're delighted when we find out that our products have been taken care of, and in particular the packaging has been held on to and re-used - every little bit counts. 

This brings me to our latest endeavour. Paper documents are becoming less and less commonly used. Most organisations who send out monthly bills and statements give their customers/clients the option to receive their bills and statements by email. Also, invoicing and communication is far more convenient and faster if you can send things instantly rather than wait the days it takes to send an invoice or correspondence out by mail. This obviously isn't a new practice, yet paper will still be used; it's a reality of day-to-day business practices. As we have been in business since 1985, we had a lot of old paperwork in filing cabinets and folders sitting around gathering dust. That is until or Accounts Admin Manager came up with an idea to rid ourselves of these older documents and save money on packaging at the same time. 

We've been shredding our used and unimportant paperwork and putting it in snap-lock bags so we can use them as a means of packing our electronic equipment securely and with minimal mess. See below. 

The advantage of the shredded paper being in the snap-lock bags are plentiful, most importantly though, the advantage for our purposes is that the paper doesn't fall in hard to reach places inside our electronics equipment that we build. The last thing we want is for a customer to purchase a new circuit board from us, only to have to spray it with a high pressure hose before they can use it! 

As I said above, we are a small business trying to keep our costs low, production efficient and most of all to keep our customers satisfied. It's little measures like this that can do all of this but even more importantly, reduce our carbon footprint to ensure the health of our planet for us, our children and our children's children after us.