LED light bulbs are an absolute game-changer. Traditional light bulbs, incandescents and fluorescents, were pretty much disposable.

You’d buy one for a few quid, and it’d last you for about a month before conking out. Then you’d throw it away and fit another one. Rinse and repeat.

Fluorescent bulbs last far longer, but they’re not exactly pretty. Office strip lighting isn’t on many interior designers’ moodboards.

LED bulbs have both of them beat, though. They last for an average of 35-50,000 hours. That’s three to five years.

They also generate a far more pleasing glow than fluorescents, which can be headache-inducing- and who doesn't want a better working environment for their staff?

They also run cooler than other light bulbs, generating very little heat. By contrast, incandescent bulbs release 90% of their energy as heat, and fluorescent bulbs are little better.

LED bulbs are better for the environment. It’s that simple.

And they’re better for your bottom line, too.

While an LED bulb might be pricier than an incandescent bulb, you can expect to go through as many as 60 over the course of a single LED bulb’s lifetime.

Multiply that figure for each and every light fitting you have, and that adds up fast.

So, you’re saving money and saving the world by moving from incandescent and fluorescent bulbs to LEDs. It’s a no-brainer.

Receipts, invoices and photocopies. All this paper waste costs UK businesses £15bn a year. That’s billion with a ‘b’.

But there are a variety of cheap, and even free, ways of cutting down on paper waste. Most of them involve printing only what you need, and making the very most out of the paper that you do have to use.

One way of cutting back is switching to email receipts, and only printing off a paper receipt for customers who request one. The US alone uses over 640,000 tons of receipt paper a year. Paper which, for the most part, will gather dust in a desk draw somewhere.

Cut the waste by sending customers email receipts direct from your point of sale. As a bonus, you’ll capture customers’ email addresses to market to.

It’s the same story with invoices: email them, and encourage your clients to only print them out if it’s absolutely necessary.

You can also cut down on unnecessary paper usage by scanning documents instead of photocopying them, and reusing items like envelopes, jiffy bags, and ring-binders.

Reducing your meat consumption can save you money and save the world.

Livestock farming is responsible for 20% of all greenhouse emissions globally, but you can cut your carbon footprint and those of your customers by seeking out locally-sourced fruit and veg.

By switching to a veggie-only menu, your cafe could cut its carbon footprint by as much as 70%.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Replacing locally-sourced beef with avocados flown in from Peru and out-of-season asparagus won’t help things much.

Instead, you need to pay attention to your food and drink’s supply chain.

Finding local farmers and suppliers who can sell you fresh, seasonal produce might be more effort than going to your wholesalers.

There’s no big list or database of vendors who can sell you local, sustainable produce — but the effort will pay off.

In a survey, more than two thirds of restaurant-goers said they were willing to pay more for sustainably produced food.

Seeking out sustainable veggie options is a great way of cutting your carbon footprint while increasing your profit margins.

Lights don’t need to be on when there’s nobody in the room to see them. Think bathrooms and stockrooms.

You can ask people politely to turn them off, but it’s not always a dead cert.

Putting lights on a timer will enable them to turn off automatically at certain times, meaning you don’t have to remember.

The hospitality and food industry in Britain wastes nearly a million tons of food each and every year, according to the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP).

Households across the country are used to putting food waste in the green bin, but businesses aren’t.

Over half of food wasted by the hospitality industry goes to landfill, and only 100,000 tons is composted.

If you’ve got any outside space then you can do your bit to cut down on this figure. All you need to do is buy a compost bin, and put your food waste there to mulch down.

Then you’ve got compost, which you can either use in a kitchen garden or, if you don’t have a garden, sell on to people who do. It’s that simple.

If you’re an employer then you have to enroll your employees in a pension scheme. It’s the law.

You can choose to go with a private pension provider, or with the government’s own NEST (National Employment Savings Trust) service, but you have to enroll your employees in one.

Pension schemes like NEST are basically giant investment funds. They invest your employees’ pension contributions into a variety of different stocks, shares, and funds with the hope of growing the fund, and therefore your employees’ pension pots.

But what are you investing in? Normal investment funds can be an environmental and an ethical nightmare.

Your employees’ money might well be supporting all sorts of nasty causes, like arms companies, like fossil fuel companies, like clothing manufacturers that use child labour — the list goes on.

Luckily, pension providers have bowed to public pressure in recent years and started to release ethical pension funds which only invest in businesses that leave your conscience clear. NEST has its own.

But all is not as it seems: Ben Martin at the Green Economy Coalition points out that these pension schemes aren’t always as green as they seem, and you’ll have to do a bit of digging to find the truly green options.

That said, take the time to get it right and you could do your bit to save the world, and to boost your employees’ pension pots: green investment funds tend to outperform the market.