Introduction
There’s more pressure than ever for businesses to reduce their carbon footprint. Whether climate change is at the top of organisations’ agendas or not, measures to reduce CO2 emissions can significantly cut costs and improve staff, partner and customer relations, making business as well as environmental sense.
Catherine Murphy, Marketing Manager of Version One, - a ‘green’ company since the launch of its Carbon Neutral Initiative in October 2006 - provides the following tips to businesses looking to reduce their CO2 emissions. These top ten tips, which have been compiled based-upon Version One’s own experiences, are measures that all types of company can implement.
Give your company a CO2 health check – It’s important to determine approximately how much CO2 your company emits and in which areas of the business CO2 emissions are the highest. Some businesses bring in a third party to assess this, however, this isn’t essential. Commonsense combined with a decent business-specific carbon calculator (e.g. http://www.climatecare.org/business/business-co2-calculator/) are usually sufficient for CO2 health checks in office-based organisations.
Appoint a green executive – If this isn’t already in place, a member of staff needs to be given overall responsibility for the company’s environmental policy. Smaller organisations may decide to provide an existing member of staff with this responsibility, in which case they need to have the time and the desire to take on the role.
Involve staff – The buy-in of all staff needs to be obtained from the outset if measures to reduce carbon emissions are to be successful. Advise all staff of the company’s ‘green’ plans and request help and suggestions. Ensure staff continue to be involved with the company’s environmental direction by establishing a ‘green committee’ and/or a ‘green ideas box’ which allows staff to put forward their own suggestions for reducing emissions.
Recycle and re-use – Whenever possible, ensure office waste is recycled or re-used, including paper, IT equipment, office furniture, textiles etc.
Cut-down on paper use – As well as recycling paper, you should implement measures and technologies to cut-down on paper use. Encourage staff to refrain from printing-out emails and invest in document management technology. This technology dramatically cuts-down on paper use as well as the printing and photocopying of paper. With a typical return-on-investment of just six months, document management also makes smart business sense.
Enforce good housekeeping – Ensure staff turn off all electrical equipment when they leave the office, including PCs, phone chargers, photocopiers and lights.
Reduce out-of-office meetings – Where possible, cut-down on car travel by encouraging phone, video and web conferences as opposed to out-of-office meetings.
Promote public transport and car sharing – When staff do have to travel, encourage the use of public transport. A car-sharing pool also reduces the number of car journeys to and from the office.
Look into offsetting schemes – As well as reducing CO2 emissions, look into carbon offsetting schemes, which often have a range of economic and social as well as ecological benefits. Tree planting, investing in ‘green energy’ projects such as wind farms and providing funds for low carbon technologies in the developing world, are some of the offsetting projects available.
Evaluate progress – After 12 months, it’s important to evaluate what impact the various measures have had. Have carbon emissions been reduced? Have staff bought-into the new measures? Have the measures cut costs? Once the results have been evaluated, plan the company’s environmental policy for the next 12 months, setting-out organisation-wide targets.
Conclusion
Within the past year, ‘climate change’ and ‘carbon footprints’ have been so widely discussed that businesses are in danger of becoming complacent to the part they should be playing in reducing carbon emissions. With organisations trying to profit from the climate change frenzy by offering CO2 consultations and all manner of CO2 reducing solutions, businesses could also be led to believe that implementing measures to reduce CO2 levels is both costly and very time-consuming.
In actual fact, all types of organisation can take steps to reduce their emissions from ensuring staff turn-off their PCs to encouraging web, video and phone conferences. ‘Going green’ needn’t cost a fortune and in actual fact, environmentally-friendly measures can save businesses money whilst improving staff morale.
For further information about Version One’s green policy, contact Version One’s Green Executive on +44(0)1625 856505 or email green@versionone.co.uk
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