by Paul Allen - Monday, 22nd October 2007 - (1) comment

1 Cut the lights
Left the lights on? Nil points. Lighting an office overnight wastes enough energy to heat water for 10,000 cups of tea. It’s also a waste of money. Appoint an office monitor or ensure the last person out always switches off. Once you’ve mastered that, embrace “greener” lighting; installing 20 low-energy bulbs will save enough carbon to fill more than 5,000 milk bottles and knock about £130 off your annual lighting costs. Low-energy bulbs have come down hugely in price and last around 12 times longer than regular bulbs.

2 Drop the thermostat
We’re not talking chunky sweater time. Turning down the office heating by just one degree will slash your energy output and reduce your typical heating bill by up to 8 per cent, according to The Carbon Trust. Think about ways to conserve heat at work. Shutting all office windows at night during winter, for example, can save 15g of CO2 and £2 per office per night.

3 Air con?
Air conditioning units are energy guzzlers. A decent fan is better for the environment and cheaper too. In the Mediterranean, offices keep their blinds down and windows closed on hot days to stop the sun heating up the air inside. If you simply can’t hack it without air con, use it wisely: “We hope to save around 8 per cent off our electricity bill simply by adjusting the time schedule settings on our air conditioning unit,” explains Andrew Rimmington of Milton Keynes-based firm, Philips Semiconductors.

4 Free money
There are plenty of tax incentives for businesses that embrace energy saving technologies and products. The Government’s Enhanced Capital Allowance scheme (see www.eca.gov.uk/etl/) allows UK businesses to claim 100% first year capital allowances on investments made to cut carbon output.
You could even get free cash through the DTI’s Low Carbon Buildings programme. Depending on which funding stream you choose, your business could land a maximum grant of £100k or 40-50 per cent of total costs, which can be used towards energy-efficient projects, such as installing solar panels, wind turbines and biomass boilers. Check out www.lowcarbonbuildings.org.uk for an application form.
Alternatively, the Carbon Trust (www.carbontrust.co.uk) also provide interest-free loans between £5,000 and £100,000 to SMEs in the UK which invest in energy-efficient equipment.

5 Unplug it
UK businesses waste huge amounts of carbon – and money – by not bothering to flick the off switch. A photocopier left on overnight uses enough energy to produce over 1,500 copies. If 20 people plug in their chargers only when actually charging their phones, it will save 1 tonne of CO2 every year. Make sure you switch off all non-essential equipment. Even snooze and standby modes suck up more energy than you might think. Research shows that an average office squanders an incredible £6,000 every year by leaving machines on unnecessarily just over weekends and bank holidays.

6 Set targets
Every business needs goals to aim for. Last year, around 400 British SMEs signed up to the ‘100 Days of Carbon Clean-Up Challenge’. The initiative set them weekly targets to monitor and reduce the carbon emissions caused by their business activities. Setting similar targets – say, a 10 per cent reduction in your paper, energy and water usage – will focus your efforts and help staff get behind the drive. Your carbon cutting campaign could even be the start of an ongoing environmental policy, which you can produce alongside your annual report. Or you might want to win the environmental management standard ISO 14001, which proves your commitment to reducing C02 emissions.

7 Get HR on side first…
Start with your HR team. They are best placed to spread the word within the company – and explain the environmental and business benefits of energy efficiency. “It makes sense for HR to own carbon emissions reductions targets,” says Frank Beechinor, chief executive of OneClickHR. “They hold data on who drives to and from work, for example. And they can promote the idea internally.”

8 … But involve everyone
Use them only to get the message across. This is a team effort. Every member of staff should be committed to cutting the company’s carbon footprint.

9 Use car sharing schemes
Ninety per cent of London’s air pollution is caused by road traffic. Cut the fumes and create beautiful new friendships by encouraging car sharing to work. An office liftshare board enables people from the same areas to commute together. Check out www.carbudi.com to find who else out there is travelling your way. The search system is free and also calculates the financial and CO2 saving each user is making compared to making that journey alone in the car.

10 Recycle
Skipping all your rubbish used to be much cheaper than paying for recycling. But with the cost of landfill set to rise annually by £8 per tonne from 2008, all that’s about to change. The tide is turning fast against irresponsible dumping. Why? Recycling one tonne of paper is equivalent to providing heat and hot water for a home for a whole year. It also saves 15 trees, 2.5 barrels of oil, 2.26m3 of landfill space, 31,320 gallons of water and 27kg of air pollutants.
UK retail and professional offices have been painfully slow to get with the programme. We currently send almost 50 per cent – 10 million tonnes of our 20 million tonnes of waste – to landfill rather than being recycled. But not for much longer. From 30 October 2007, the new Landfill Directive will require businesses of any size not to send non-hazardous waste to landfill without prior treatment. Even if you’re not thinking green, spiralling costs and increasingly tight legislation are two very good reasons to get ahead of the game now. Introduce a rigorous recycling collection scheme. These days you can recycle everything from empty printer cartridges to old computer monitors. Speak to your local council about the different services they offer. Depending on where you’re based, they may subsidise your collection charges.

11 Use the tap
Don't buy a water cooler. They might make life easy, but you’re committing to a carbon-heavy process of giant plastic bottles, cooling systems and road haulage. What’s wrong with water from a tap? If you don’t like the taste, invest in a water filter. If it’s got to be ice cold and you've a fridge in the office, just put tap water into a bottle and store it there. Simple.

12 Think about carbon offsetting….
Fancy yourself as a “zero carbon company”? Once you’ve slimmed down your heating and travel to the bare minimum, there are dozens of companies who will happily tot up your remaining emissions and “neutralise” them by investing your cash in sustainability initiatives, renewable energy projects and the like.

13 ….But be very careful
The carbon offsetting market is largely unregulated, awash with chancers and has been heavily criticised for all manner of misleading claims. Perhaps the biggest gripe is that offsetting could be seen as an excuse to simply carry on our bad behaviour (check out www.cheatneutral.com for a clever analogy). But even if you’ve genuinely cut back and want to “cancel out” the rest, many offsetting schemes are simply rackets, with large amounts of your money being spent on “administration”. Others are better intentioned but far from convincing. Planting trees for example has been shown to be largely ineffective in the short term and even potentially harmful. Nevertheless, offsetting can be a positive experience if you choose your company carefully. Look out for the WWF’s Gold Standard – it’s a best practice benchmark for projects which reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and foster sustainable development. But if all that seems too much hassle, just make a regular contribution to a climate change charity.

14 Encourage cycling
Two wheels are better than four, at least for the planet. How well set up is your workplace for budding cyclists? Bicycle purchasing schemes, shower facilities and proper bike racks can all encourage staff to use pedal power. Under the Government’s Cycle To Work scheme, employers can loan bicycles to their staff as a tax-free benefit on the condition that the bicycles are mainly used to get to and from work or for work-related purposes. The employee ‘buys’ the bike at the end of the load period for a nominal sum.

15 Change your energy supplier
This is a no-brainer. Switching to a green tariff takes a few minutes (check out uswitch.com) but it could be the biggest carbon-cutting decision you’ll ever make. The big power companies have (finally) all woken up to green tariffs, but specialist electricity providers like Ecotricity, Good Energy and Green Energy are usually no more expensive, 100% committed to green energy and are actively investing in creating new renewable energy supplies. Go with them.

16 Insulate your workplace
Don’t yawn. Cavity wall insulation might be dull, but it could save you a packet and a huge amount of wasted carbon. Around 30 per cent of all your office heat loss goes through the walls. Check out the Energy Saving Trust (www.energysavingtrust.org.uk) to see if your building needs better insulating. It’s very fast, entirely painless and pretty cheap (around £250). With energy savings of around £150 per year, it’ll pay for itself in no time.

17 Win kitemarks
How can you prove your carbon credentials? Winning the ISO 14001 environmental quality standard (see www.iso-14001.org.uk) shows customers, suppliers and partners that you’re truly practising what you preach. There are other accreditations too. The BREEAM scheme (www.breeam.org) is an environmental assessment for offices, which looks at several aspects of sustainability and energy use. Not-for-profit water company Belu has also developed Penguin, its own eco-kitemark. Accreditation is given only to those companies who have achieved “carbon neutral” status.

18 Don’t fly….
Do you really need to make that trip to the States? Business travel accounts for 25 per cent of all flights and up to 50 per cent of a company’s total carbon emissions. It’s not just about your staff, either. How much of your supply chain relies on air transport? Organic food box company Abel & Cole delivers seasonal food all year round. When British farms aren’t harvesting, they look abroad. But the SME upholds a strict “no fly” policy. “We never air freight produce,” says director Ella Heeks. “It generates approximately 30 times more carbon dioxide than sea freight – totally crazy!”

19 …When technology already has the answers
Catching flights wastes time, money and energy. Videoconferencing cuts the carbon and increases the amount of time employees can spend doing productive work (when they would otherwise be hanging around at the airport). UK gas detection company Honeywell Analytics Ltd uses videoconferencing at least twice a week, mainly to China but also other countries such as America and Switzerland. Reducing travel costs is just one reason. “Videoconferencing allows us to conduct our business with the Chinese much more professionally and coherently,” says network manager Simon Turner. “There is always going to be a language barrier, but with videoconferencing you can actually see the people you are speaking with. This means you can demonstrate product and carry out your business dealings as if you were in the same room as each other.” The drawback is that decent videoconferencing kit doesn’t come cheap. Boardroom systems start around £7,500. Videophones cost from £200. Work out your flight expenditure and the expected ROI. For a budget alternative, try Skype’s free video calling.

20 Clean your supply chain
Consider the carbon impact of your purchasing patterns. In the workplace, buy recycled, low-impact supplies (see www.greenyouroffice.co.uk for ideas). To truly minimise your carbon, go vintage and buy recycled office furniture. Freecycle (www.uk.freecycle.org) can be a great place to pick up all manner of second-hand office paraphernalia for nothing. If you do want to buy brand new, make sure any wooden furniture has come from renewable stocks. Look out for the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) kitemark.

21 Redesign your product
Can you make your existing produce range more efficient? Fulleon Ltd, which manufactures emergency “break glass” units, worked with government advice agency Envirowise to simplify its product. The result: a third reduction in the number of parts, plastic consumption, assembly time and packaging used in its design process. The consultancy service cost the company £97,000. But with annual savings – through reduced materials and labour costs – standing at £92,650, they’ll be making savings after just 13 months.

22 Green your car scheme
Making your next company car a low-emissions model will qualify you for a range of tax breaks – as well as helping the environment. If you buy a low-carbon vehicle, you will be eligible for a capital allowance of 100 per cent in the first year providing the car costs less than £12,000 and produces less than 120g of CO2 per kilometre. If it produces less than 100g/km, you will be exempt from road tax too. You’ll also slash your company car tax: for cars producing less than 140 g/km, you pay tax on only 15 per cent of the vehicle's value. If your low-carbon vehicle is dual-fuel (like the popular Toyota Prius), you will qualify for a 100 per cent discount on the London Congestion Charge too.

23 Reduce waste
Going green isn’t rocket science. There are dozens of ways to cut down waste at work. For example, just setting double-sided copying feature as default on the copier can save 1.5 tonnes of CO2 per year. Cornish environmental centre, the Eden Project, found an even simpler way to save energy when it switched from disposable to washable cutlery and crockery. Sounds trivial? The decision actually saves nine tonnes of waste going to landfill every year. A dishwasher has also been installed (creating two permanent jobs in the kitchen) and 700,000 fewer disposable items are now bought each year, greatly reducing transport and energy costs. The Eden Project estimates financial savings of £180,000 over five years. Just from washing up!

24 Fit solar panels
Harnessing the sun’s energy sounds pretty far out, especially on our un-tropical shores. But PV systems (solar panelling to you and me) can provide around 15 per cent of your annual electricity needs and are very low maintenance. The systems aren’t cheap – prices vary wildly but you’re looking at around £9,000 – and the ROI is approximately 15 years. But with energy prices looking set to rise, harvesting your own makes good business sense. Plus you’ll be in for a host of tax breaks, including exemption from the Climate Change Levy. And with national energy providers required to supply a certain amount of renewable energy, you could even sell yours back to the grid. Mark Ormiston, Managing Director of Ormiston Wire, the first small company in Britain to complete a solar installation, is thinking both of the planet and his balance sheet. ‘We believe that achieving sustainability and protecting the environment is very important. As a family business that has run for 210 years, we see measures such as installing solar power as an investment, not just in the environment, but in the future of our business.’

25 Toilets
How efficient is your loo? An office of 100 staff with traditional 9-litre cistern toilets could save £500 a year simply by fitting a cistern volume adjuster, such as a hippo bag. A litre bottle of water can be used as a displacement device in many older cisterns at no capital cost. In the little boys’ room, urinals operating without flush controls can use up to half of a company's “domestic” water use. By fitting Passive Infrared Sensors (PIR) at a cost of around £350, a company with 100 male employees could save £3,800 each year in water and sewerage costs – a payback period of just five weeks. See the Enhanced Capital Allowance Scheme for Water Technologies website (www.eca-water.gov.uk) for more ideas.

26 Track your energy use
Know your enemy. Plug-in energy monitors work out the precise consumption of your various office appliances. They’re cheap (around £25) and allow you to see which machines are the real carbon guzzlers. “The energy meters we purchased were a great success,” says Susie Diamond, Building Physics Engineer at Fulcrum Consulting. “We now know that our standard PCs use 70 watts, and our flat-screen monitors 20 watts when they are switched on. Monitoring one of our boiling water dispensers showed that we could save 40 per cent by turning it off for evenings and weekends.”

27 Shout about it
Log every “green” action you take and educate your staff about the environmental benefits. This will help them to get involved, increase their morale and get the best of out them. After all, who wants to work for an environmentally irresponsible company? Your carbon-cutting initiatives can form the backbone of a new corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy, which you can use to promote your ethical approach to all your stakeholders. The astronomic rise in all things Fairtrade and organic proves that consumers are increasingly shopping with their heads and their hearts: in a recent survey, 86 per cent of UK adults said the environment is the most important issue for companies to focus on.

Paul Allen is the author of Your Ethical Business: How to Plan, Start and Succeed in a Company with a Conscience.