Green Building Tips

Julie Starr • July 8, 2021



Green building can help you to save energy, lower your operating costs, and love a more environmentally friendly life. Everyone benefits from a green building.

Use Space Efficiently

Larger spaces need more energy to heat, cool, and light. The decisions that you make when you design a building will impact the environment for years to come, so you need to pay attention to the way you use your space. Where you can, minimize the size of the building. A smaller footprint means a lower energy load, and less open space is used. Using the right materials and equipment helps too. Buy used equipment, instead of new, at FleetUpMarketplace . 

Invest In Insulation

An HVAC system is one of the main energy drains in a building. If you invest in high-quality insulation, you will be better able to maintain the interior temperature.

Insulation keeps cold air in, and hot air out during the summer, and the opposite in winter, reducing the workload on your HVAC system.

Use Solar Energy

The roof deflects the sun’s rays from your building. You can harness those rays to provide some power. 

Solar energy is growing fast because it’s clean and has almost no ongoing costs to collect. Solar panels can be placed strategically on your roof. Any power that you are able to produce and don’t consume can be sold back to your electric company. 

You could also choose to fit a battery that can be used to store any excess power. At night, when you can’t get solar power, the batteries can be used instead. This helps you to reduce the amount of electricity you need to pay for even more. 

Make Space For Gardens

Massive farms producing food can be very damaging to the environment. Runoff from pesticides pollutes the water table, while heavy farming equipment releases greenhouse gases. If you’re designing a green building, you should understand the importance of producing fresh produce. 

Residential and commercial properties should try to find some space for gardening to be done. At home, a food garden reduces your grocery spend and can teach children about where food comes from. Gardening has a lot of health benefits that companies can use to help stressed employees. 

The extra greenery also helps to clean the air. 

Adapt To Nature. Don’t Replace It

A new building changes the space it occupies forever. A new structure casts new shadows, changes the way that rainwater reaches rivers, lakes, and streams, and forces animals that lived on the site to move on somewhere else or be exterminated. New traffic patterns come into play, increasing road noise, and requiring new parking spaces, reducing the local tree population. 

Architects who want to build in a much greener, more sustainable way should make sure they take the time to carry out a detailed site survey. This survey should look at how water flows, and how nature is currently interacting with the land. Where possible, you should try to balance the needs of the development with the needs of any existing wildlife and plant life that is inhabiting the land at the moment. 

Over the last couple of decades, an enormous amount of the planet’s wilderness has been destroyed. We all have a responsibility to do more to reduce the impact of the ever-growing urban landscapes on nature and the planet. Including large green spaces in our developments is a good place to start, but there is more than can be done. 

For example, when constructing, it’s better to use locally sourced materials. Layouts should be adapted to the existing landscape. Build with the local landscape in mind, such as including sliding glass walls and doors that can be pushed back when the temperatures allow it to let some of nature in. Architects should try to make their buildings blend in with their surroundings, through locally sourced building materials. 

Those who advocate for green building practices are all working very hard to teach architects and construction companies how to best minimize the impact their work has on the planet. They can learn to preserve natural water flow and avoid site preparation that is expensive and excessive. 

In the construction of transportation networks, environmentally conscious design can be used to create bridges for animals. These bridges are important, as they allow migratory species to avoid having to crossroads and highways, and instead walk over them safely. This reduces the number of collisions between vehicles and animals, keeping humans and animals safer. These bridges also support the local ecosystem by allowing natural migratory patterns to continue. 

Greener Clicks: How to Reduce Your Environmental Impact with Sustainable Digital Marketing

By Julie Starr • March 31, 2025
In the race to decarbonize our world, one area often overlooked is digital marketing. While it might seem inherently clean compared to print or physical campaigns, our online activities have a real and measurable environmental footprint. From servers powering your website to emails filling up inboxes, every click, stream, and scroll contributes to carbon emissions. At Taiga Company, we believe digital strategies can be powerful and low-impact. Here’s how to get started. Optimize for a Low-Carbon Web Why it matters: Websites and digital ads are hosted on servers that consume electricity, often powered by fossil fuels. Every time a user loads your site or ad, it uses energy. How to reduce your impact: Host green: Choose web hosts that use renewable energy or offset emissions. Clean up your code: Streamlined, efficient code reduces load times and energy use. Compress and reduce images: Smaller files mean faster pages and fewer emissions. Limit heavy media: Videos and animations are carbon-intensive; use them mindfully. A faster, leaner website isn’t just better for the planet—it also boosts SEO and user experience. Email Marketing with Intention Why it matters: Every email sent, received, and stored requires energy. Multiply that by millions of sends, and the impact adds up. How to reduce your impact: Clean your lists: Remove inactive subscribers to avoid waste. Segment wisely: Only send emails to those who will truly benefit. Use plain-text when possible: It’s lower in data and often more accessible. Reduce frequency: Send fewer, higher-quality emails with genuine value. Intentional emailing reduces not only emissions but also improves deliverability and engagement. Sustainable SEO and Content Strategy Why it matters: Search engines crawl, index, and serve up billions of web pages daily. Thoughtless content and bloated sites add to the load. How to reduce your impact: Create evergreen content: Focus on high-quality pages that stay relevant longer. Streamline your site structure: Fewer clicks to find content = less energy use. Use minimal plugins and scripts: Especially ones that load on every page. Green your CMS: Some content management systems are more resource-efficient than others. Sustainable SEO isn’t just eco-friendly—it’s good strategy. Fewer, better pieces often perform better than content mills. Rethink Marketing Automation Why it matters: Automated emails, ads, and data syncing can create a lot of digital clutter. That clutter eats up storage and energy. How to reduce your impact: Audit regularly: Retire old workflows and outdated automations. Optimize syncing: Reduce how often and how much data is transferred. Segment with purpose: Better targeting means fewer wasted sends. Use expiration dates: Don’t let outdated content or assets live forever. Efficient automation can reduce emissions and improve performance. Digital marketing isn’t going away—and it shouldn’t. It offers powerful tools for connection, education, and growth. But like all tools, it can be used more sustainably. At Taiga Company, we’re committed to helping organizations lower their environmental impact without sacrificing reach or results. Sustainable digital marketing is not only possible; it’s essential. Ready to make your marketing aligned with your company's corporate sustainability plan? Let’s start the conversation.

World Water Day 2025: How Beverage Brands Are Leading on Water—and Why Communicating It Matters

By Julie Starr • March 24, 2025
At Taiga Company, we work alongside brands who are not only doing the hard work of sustainability—but are learning how to talk about it in ways that connect with their stakeholders. This World Water Day , we’re reflecting on how leading beverage companies are advancing bold water stewardship goals and communicating those efforts clearly, thoughtfully, and strategically across digital platforms. Water is foundational to the beverage industry. From ingredient sourcing to packaging to community health, it’s a resource that demands attention—not just in terms of conservation, but in terms of how that commitment is shared with consumers, investors, regulators, and partners. Below, we’re highlighting three beverage companies whose recent water stewardship actions—and storytelling—stood out. PepsiCo: From Field to Community, Global Water Replenishment in Action PepsiCo launched 16 new water replenishment projects across nine countries in 2024 alone, restoring more than 1.7 billion liters of water to local ecosystems. These projects are practical and people-centered—ranging from irrigation efficiency in Texas to sustainable farming practices in the Dominican Republic. What stood out: clear project data, human-focused storytelling, and alignment with global frameworks. PepsiCo’s water webpage provides easy access to targets, progress updates, and case studies, helping stakeholders understand both the “why” and the “how.” Suntory Global Spirits: Water at the Heart of the Brand Suntory’s brands—from Maker’s Mark in Kentucky to Yamazaki in Japan—share a common origin: water. The company’s commitment to being net water positive by 2050 isn’t just a corporate goal—it’s integrated into brand storytelling, on-site conservation efforts, and supplier engagement. Their message is rooted in authenticity: water isn’t just an operational input, it’s an essential ingredient in their identity. Learn more on Suntory’s efforts via their LinkedIn post . Asahi Group Holdings: Building Local Water Resilience Together In the Netherlands, Asahi’s Koninklijke Grolsch partnered with stakeholders in the Twente region to develop a local water platform focused on reducing consumption and innovating wastewater reuse. This goes beyond operational efficiency—it’s about building water resilience within a shared ecosystem. Their community-first framing and long-term investment approach were key themes in this post . Why This Matters At Taiga Company, we believe that sustainability actions only go as far as their ability to be understood, felt, and trusted. Communicating water stewardship isn’t just about reporting metrics or sharing photos of wetlands (although both can help). It’s about giving stakeholders the context they need to see a company’s values in motion—clear commitments, thoughtful execution, and measurable impact.  If your team is evolving its water strategy—or simply looking for better ways to communicate what you're already doing—we’d love to be part of that conversation.
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