An environmental policy can be as short as a paragraph and therefore not worth 'not' having one in this day and age.
....You may lose business by not having one.
I have to agree with Inzvestor - it's not difficult and if you're setting up a new company, why wouldn't you have one? And just because you don't know you're losing business, doesn't mean you aren't.
Having recently set up, it was a natural part of our thinking on "What kind of company do we want to be?" along with other questions like "What kind of people do we want to recruit?", "What do we want our working culture to be?" and "Would we be prepared to compromise our brand to get large contracts?", etc.
So when we've selected suppliers we've actually asked them those awkward questions about whether they have a policy. I'd rather have a supplier who has thought about this than have to change suppliers further down the line when (if?) this becomes increasingly important to our customers.
Would we be prepared to pay more for it? Well, actually possibly yes. Not
just because a policy exists but because of what it says about the company - arguably it shows that a company is thinking ahead and is aware of customer trends, and is probably more likely to be around for the long-term, and that's what we're looking for in our key suppliers.
Oh and having a policy doesn't mean a company has impeccable credentials! It just means a certain level of awareness and a willingness to set out what is and isn't acceptable. For instance we do quite a bit of printing, and we don't use laminated print as it's pretty eco-unfriendly, but we don't always use recycled paper - it's surprisingly expensive (but we do use recyclable paper, and we'll move towards recycled paper as soon as it becomes more economic!). [Printers - please come back to me on this if you disagree!]
