FAQs
What is Greening our Business?
Greening our Business is an online platform designed to help small to medium businesses to quickly assess where they currently are on the journey towards environmental sustainability and give them guidance on how to take the next steps.
It has been designed to not just be a once-off assessment, but to hopefully lead to a journey of discovery and progress as businesses find out what they can do next and move towards sustainability. It’s not intended to be difficult or to set a high bar to get over, but to give everyone a starting point, wherever they are on their journey. Hopefully there’s something for everyone in here, but we’d also love to see businesses outgrow our platform and move onto more difficult certifications, such as becoming Carbon Neutral, a B Corp or similar.
SME owners already wear a lot of hats, so we have designed this platform to make the first steps onto your business sustainability journey easy, tailoring a customised plan to help get you from where you are to where you want to be.
Who can take part?
Greening our Business has been designed for small and medium businesses across all industries located in participating Council (Local Government) areas.
By ‘Business’ we don’t just mean for-profit businesses. We especially encourage community organisations and social enterprises to participate. Home-based businesses can also register, although some of the information provided may not be as relevant to you.
What is involved?
To take part you will complete two short surveys where you will answer questions about your business on topics including energy efficiency, transportation, waste and materials used. This information is used to assess the sustainability of different aspects of your business.
From your answers we will give you a Greening our Business Score along with a tailored plan of actions, resources and links to funding and assistance programs. These actions are designed to help your business save money, lower emissions, increase circularity, reduce waste and improve on your original Greening our Business Score.
What does it cost?
This platform has been developed by a collaboration of Victorian Local Governments alongside the Northern Alliance for Greenhouse Action and is completely free for businesses located within the participating Council areas.
How does Greening our Business help my business save money?
Greening our Business generates a tailored plan of actions, resources and links to funding and assistance programs. Actions like energy efficiency are designed to reduce your energy bills, while increasing your participation in the circular economy can help you find value in what has been considered waste products.
The Greening our Business program is designed to help guide you towards actions that will make the biggest difference to your business, so you can identify the best opportunities.
Businesses have limited finances and many rebates and grants can only be used once. This makes it important to plan your upgrades carefully to maximise their impact and make your dollars go further. A rebate or grant applied well can enable an upgrade to go ahead at all, or it can mean you can afford a mid-range or high-end upgrade that will perform better, be more reliable and last longer than a cheaper alternative. Don’t waste these opportunities on actions that won’t make a significant difference to your running costs or environmental impact, or may even make them worse.
How much time will it take?
Business owners are busy people, we get it. To sign up to the program and complete the surveys should take you approximately 25 minutes in total. If you want to go a bit deeper and tell us more about actions you’ve been taking there are some open-ended questions you can spend more time on, but they’re optional.
How do I get a Greening our Business Score?
You will automatically receive a score when you have completed a module. You will receive an overall Greening our Business score when you have completed both the Energy & Transport and Circular Economy modules. The score is valid for two years, after which you can re-take the surveys to renew your score.
What does this score mean?
Your score indicates where you are on your sustainability journey. It can be updated at any time by re-taking the relevant survey and updating your answers after you’ve taken actions (guided by your Action Plan).
If you get a Greening our Business score of 50% or more, you are eligible for Partner status in the Greening our Business Program.
If you achieve a score of 80% or more you will be awarded the Leader status.
Your score is valid for 2 years, after which you will be required to re-take the surveys to update your score. This gives you time to act with the help of your Action Plan, generating cost savings, greater business efficiency, positive environmental outcomes and improve on your Greening our Business Score.
Is Greening our Business a certification?
No. Greening our Business is designed as an easy entry point for businesses into their sustainability journey. We are not checking on any claims made by businesses or requiring any proof. However, participating businesses are reminded that when answering these questions and providing information, truthfulness and transparency is a legal obligation under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 administered by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
For further information refer to the “Green marketing and the Australian Consumer Law” document, which is a guide to educate businesses about their obligations regarding environmental claims and aims to assist them to assess the strength of any environmental claims they make.
We encourage businesses that want to go further and gain official certifications to participate in programs such as Climate Active, B Corp and similar.
What makes Greening our Business different?
Because Greening our Business is run by your Local Government, we are truly independent and don’t have any interest in selling you anything or selling your data to anyone else to make money. We’re not influenced by commercial gain, we’re not recommending the actions that give us the best commissions, we’re here purely to help your business find out what actions you can take that are of most benefit to you and to the future sustainability of our areas.
How do I become a Greening our Business Partner?
To become a Partner you need to complete both modules and get an average score of at least 50%.
What’s in it for the participating Councils?
Councils’ Economic Development departments are there to help their local businesses to thrive, supporting the local economy and employment. Climate Emergency and Sustainability departments strive to help their communities to reduce their environmental impacts and adapt to climate change. Both goals are assisted by Greening our Business.
One way that we do this is to identify our local leaders, learn from them and share their actions with others to inspire and educate. Greening our Business is as much an educational tool for us as it is for you. It’s a great way for you to tell us about what you’ve been doing to Green your Business.
What if my business isn’t located in one of the participating Council areas?
Unfortunately, in this early stage of the program you can only join if you are in one of the participating Council areas. In the future we hope to expand the platform to other Council areas. If you are really keen, let your Local Government Economic Development and Sustainability departments know about this program and they can request to be added to the waiting list.
How should I register if I have multiple business locations across participating Council areas?
As each business location may be at a different stage of the sustainability journey, we encourage you to have each site manager sign up individually under a unique account and fill in the surveys for each location. For ease of identification, you can put the location after the business name at registration. E.g. Business One (Preston)
What should I do if I take over a business that has an active account on Greening our Business?
We’d love to welcome you into the Greening our Business platform and help you on your sustainability journey. Unfortunately for privacy reasons we cannot enable you to take over an existing account unless the previous owner has explicitly given you permission and transferred the account to you themselves by changing the account contact details and password. Otherwise, you will need to create a new account and fill in the required surveys to create a new Score and Action Plan. Please notify us so we can deactivate the old account.
What if I don’t own or manage a business or organisation?
Even if you are not a business owner, director, or manager, you can still play a vital role in the Greening our Business program. There are many ways to get involved, including asking your favourite businesses if they are a Greening our Business Partner or Leader. Advocate within your own workplace, or organisations to which you belong. One of the most influential ways you can contribute is by supporting businesses and organisations through your patronage.
How do I become a Greening our Business Leader?
To become a Greening our Business Leader you need to complete both modules and get an average score of at least 80%.
Switching from gas to electric made so much sense for us. Through Darebin Council.
Santhos Kothapeta
Manager, Moon Rabbit Cafe