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Embedding environmental sustainability presentation
This document outlines the creation of an environmental handbook for making an office space more sustainable. It describes conducting a survey of staff to identify areas to focus on. It then details the development of the handbook, which provides guidance on topics like transportation, food, recycling, and administration to improve environmental practices through everyday actions and foster a culture of concern. The handbook is intended to save the planet, time, and money using a simple and effective approach communicated through various means like social media and emails.
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Embedding environmental sustainability presentation
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- 2. Contents – Intro – Survey –The Handbook – Extra info
- 3. Why? – Go GreenPilot ’12 – Challenges – What we needed
- 4. The Survey Getting here& there Food & Drink At the Desk Heating & Lighting Recycling Admin Humanitarian Centre & Member organisations taken as a whole Getting here & there Food & Drink At the Desk Heating & Lighting Recycling Admin Broken down into individual responses
- 5. The Big Idea Everyday Actions Cultureof Concern Improved Environmental Practise
- 6. What we created. –Is a guide to how you can achieve a more environmentally friendly office space – Content – How to – Extra info – The wall chart – Structure – Feedback The Environmental Handbook Go green Food & Drink Getting here & there At the desk AdminRecycling Water Weather
- 7. Getting here &there
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- 15. ... Or not Asa checklist? As inspiration?
- 16. Social Media – Newstories – Environmental campaigns – National events – Light-hearted pictures – Networking – Groups – Reminders – Formal communication
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- 19. To bring itall back together ... Improved Environmental Practise Everyday Actions Culture of Concern 7 Key themes Simple Efficient Effective Social media E-mails Generating interest Triple Bottom Line - Saving the planet - Saving time - Saving money
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- 21. Save the planet,save time, save money
- 22. Finally – http://www.humanitariancentre.org/what-we-offer/skills-and-capacity-building- resource-centre/environmental-practices/ Humanitarian Centre What weoffer Skills and capacity building Environmental PracticesIt’s all online
- 23. Any questions ... ? &thank you for listening
Editor's Notes
- #4 Last year the Humanitarian Centre took part in a scheme started by a student from Anglia Ruskin University. It was attempting to improve the environmental performance of small organisations in and around Cambridge. It was based around an online workbook, and an external environmental auditor that would come round and check that you had met certain criteria. This had its advantages, it was highly structured and formalised so that you knew exactly what you had to do and how to do it to improve. However it was a little bit of a faf. & It only lasted a year, so before any real significant change could be made the scheme was stopped. The Humanitarian Centre still wanted to improve its environmental performance but couldn’t.TIME, RESOURCES, MONEY. Challenges faced by all NGOs. But they still wanted to!!!! Efficient, effective, carbon footprintTherefore they needed a system that was simple. Implementable. Didn’t require much effort. But still made a meaningful difference to their environmental performance. The Environmental Handbook was the outcome of this process
- #5 So the survey worked by getting member organisations to answer a few questions on each of the key themes of everyday office life to get an idea of how green their current practices are etc. Etc. The graph on the left shows the average for all of the member organisations and the Hum Centre. Not Bad.However when broken down there are big gaps. Organisations do well in some area, but not in others. There is scope, from the humanitarian centre’s perspective, to provide a broad overview of info covering all the themes for all the members to try and make sure all are achieving as much as they can. One of the steps we did take was that we realised how important international travel was for our member organisations. We’re not going to tell you to stop going off around the world and doing the amazing stuff that you are doing. So I researched the ethical minefield that is Carbon Offsetting as an option for the unavoidable carbon footprint, however more on that later.
- #6 To achieve improved environmental practise simple steps need to be take within a culture of concern.Everyday actions means the day to day activities around the office. This is where simple, significant difference can be made that add up over time. It is also nothing exceptional. Altering behaviour, rather than fundamentally changing it. Culture of concern. Now this is the idea that you can tell someone to recycle, but 9 times out of 10 they’re not going to care. However if you create a culture for concern for the environment within the workplace. You can tell someone to recycle and 9 times out of 10 they will. Creating a culture of concern is all about being aware of environmental issues going on around the world, engaging with debates, just keeping environmental issues within you realm of interest.
- #7 Content – has all the details about what you can doSystem – how you should use the ideasExtra info – environmentally friendly office supplies - Carbon offsetting - Above and beyond section: biodiversity in the office, energy metering, printing The whole Handbook is structured around the A3 environmental wall chart! It is a massive checklist of all the things that you can do around the office to improve it’s environmental sustainability it is structured around the 7 key themes of office life travel, food and drink, at the desk, weather, water, recycling and admin.Embed it into everyday life. Makes it simple. Makes it accessible. I will now go over each of these themes and explain a little bit about them.
- #8 Getting here & there is all about thinking about travel.Not only getting into the office but how others get there as wellDirections on your website or when you are e-mailing a visitor.International -> carbon offsetting. (which I’ll talk about later) or video conferencing. The internet and social media make this a lot easier. HEALTH, MONEY, WELLBEING!
- #9 Thinking about the hidden footprint of where your food has come from is importantTrying to eat seasonally.Also making sure what you buy is fairly traded. Drinks. REUSABLE CUPS. But the biggest one is the energy used when boiling a kettle. If everyone in the UK only boiled as much water as they needed in the kettle we would save enough energy to light the streets of Britain for two months. Thinking carefully about what you eat and drink & how you consume it.
- #10 The hub of your working day! Any changes that you can make here will get multiplied by the amount of time that you spend sitting there. At the desk is all about what you use, and how you use it. Key ideas in this theme include switching off appliances that aren’t in use unplugging appliances that don’t need to be plugged in all the time. It is also about reflecting on the equipment you are using. There are now a whole range of more sustainable and affordable office products that can replace standard office equipment. Part of the document we produced was comparing traditional office products with environmentally friendly alternatives. Based on 34 standard office supply products we made and £8.23 saving by choosing the environmental alternative
- #11 This idea is that the weather conditions on a day to day bases should determine the heating and lighting situation in an office. Working with the conditions, rather than trying to create an artificial environment will save energy.The reason I chose to label it ‘weather’ is because the British love to talk about the weather. So if you start to connect the ideas between weather and energy use, then you will always be aware of how much energy you are usingLightingHeatingTop Tip = buy a thermometer to settle those debates about whether or not to turn on the radiator!
- #12 An important aspect of the environment often looked over in environmental policy is that of water. Energy it takes to heat water upWater scarcity and efficiency. We are very lucky in the UK . ’ . We should think about water. The degree to which you will be able to act on your water footprint will largely be based on the control you have over the building in which the office is based. However there is a range of actions you can take, from putting less water in the kettle, all the way through to upgrading the building’s boiler system. Kettles, taps, washing hands, flushing the loo
- #13 The most often thought about environmental policy. What you can recycle really depends on where you are. The facilities offered vary from council to council. Fortunately Cambridge is one of the best in the country. It has commingled recycling facilities which means you can pretty much chuck anything and everything into the one bin & it is sorted for you elsewhere. What you can do --> If I can get a cumbersome college to change & a load of students to start then a small office based charity definitely can! Make it easy. = desk side Remind people = posters & e-mails Contact building managers
- #14 There may be no pretty pictures of admin, but it is a really important step to take.Focusing on the everyday is great, but at some point this needs to be underpinned by some structural work.This is all about taking formal steps to embed your commitments.StatementJob descriptionsTraining But then it is also about reviewing the steps taken in the scheme. Setting targets & looking back on the year. All though a bit of a hassle formalising at least some aspects, will help to solidify and embed the steps that you take.
- #15 So this is a small sample of the A3 wall chart to give you an idea of the kind of things that are included.The actual chart is 3 pages long and covers all the 7 themes that I have talked about so far. Actions progress along the chart from bronze, through silver, towards gold. Gradually getting more significant as you go along. The idea is that this goes up somewhere in the office and that as you complete an action, you can tick it off. This gives you great instant visual feedback as well as being a handy source of ideas that you can take when going about your everyday office life. Ideally this would be used as follows: committment -> actions -> review -> targets. On an annual basis. This helps to formalise the process and keeps you engaged with the scheme. BUT
- #16 We don’t want to dictate to you how you should use this. If the whole system doesn’t really work for you then just use the resources we provide as a set of things that you can do & just use it as a basic checklist.Or if you like the idea of what we’ve done, but don’t think the content is quite right, feel free to use it as inspiration for your own green initiative.The bottom line here is that steps are taken to improve the environmental sustainability of organisations. How you do this isn’t really that important. What i’ve done is produce what i think is the most effective way of going about this. But the needs and capabilities will vary from member organisation to member organisation.
- #17 I spoke earlier about the important of creating a culture of concern. Well social media is a great tool for achieving this.Big businesses are already ahead of the game. The Social Media Influence Group already produces an annual Sustainability index of the companies that are best at presenting themselves as sustainable. They do this through concertedly using these different media. Now all this may be slightly besides the point is that it shows how effective social media can be in raising the profile of environmental issues.If you can mobilise this kind of thing within the office then you are much more likely to succeed in improving your environmental sustainability. Charities can easily do this as tackling climate change can be incoporated into your ethics. FACEBOOKTWITTERLINKEDINE-MAIL
- #18 Responsibility as a consumer. Think through the supply chain. Recycled content, source material, chemicals, travel footprintRANGEPaper = 100% recycled Casing = recycledStaple-less staplerRecycled tape & non toxic chemicalsGlue stick = no palm oilPunch pockets are made from oil refinery by products & are biodegradableCleaner = non toxic, made with plant based materials, has no water footprint & is approved by the vegan societyPRICE SUPPLIER & SUPPLIES!!! Green stationary company We compared 35 standard office products with their environmental alternative and the we actually saved £8.23
- #19 The difficulty with charities is that much of the good work that you do is international in its outlook. At some point you are going to have to fly around the world and visit people in other countries. I would class this as an unavoidable carbon footprint.An interesting idea is to carbon offset. Now ... This is an ethical minefieldAt its basic carbon “debt” here is bought off with carbon “credit” elsewhere, thus balancing the net level of carbon. With me so far. What makes it difficult is ADDITIONALITY. ACCOUNTABILITY. ACCREDITATION. PROFIT However there are options out there that work with people in developing countries to introduce green technologies. Combining environmental and social sustainability to improve people’s livelihoods. WIN WIN. VARIETY OF PROJECTS. Energy efficient cooking stoves in ghana = empowering women.