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The Carbon Trust has launched an online service designed
to boost employee engagement with the green agenda, arguing
that embracing environmental best practices could potentially
save large UK businesses and public sector bodies £500m a
year through energy and waste reductions alone.
The company last week launched Carbon
Trust Empower™ - which can be downloaded by public
bodies and businesses free of charge.
The interactive application allows employees to take
a virtual tour of a typical office building to learn
how to make environmental improvements, such as turning
off unused equipment or avoiding unnecessary corporate
travel.
They can then also set personal goals for reducing their
environmental impact using the application, which can be shared
with their managers.
Analysis by the Carbon Trust has found that a typical 10-storey
office building with a 30,000 metre squared floor area and
2,500 employees could save £150,000 and over 500 tonnes of
carbon dioxide annually by using the Empower tool.
A spokesman said this could equate to total savings of £500m
if all the organisations and businesses in the UK carried
out half of the recommended measures.
He added that Empower was the most "sophisticated, rigourous
and robust tool" that the company has developed to engage
employees.
Richard Rugg, director of Carbon Trust Programmes, said the
tool was designed to help change employee behaviour, which
is often seen as one of the greatest obstacles to companies'
efforts to curb their environmental impacts.
"Companies often struggle to harness the huge energy savings
that an effectively engaged workforce can help deliver," he
explained. "Part of the problem employers face is making actions
practical, fun and sustained. By creating a virtual tour entirely
from an employee's viewpoint, every aspect of Empower has
been designed with the end-user in mind."
The programme was originally slated for release in November,
but was delayed to early January as the organisation ironed
out a number of technical glitches.
The Empower programme estimates companies could make annual
savings of over £200 per employee by taking advantage of the
following tips -
- Turning off your PC and monitor in the evening could save
£39 a year per person.
- Keeping blinds open and turning off lights when there
is enough daylight, or when areas are unoccupied could save
more than £10 per year per person.
- Accepting a one degree reduction in workplace temperatures
could save more than £4 per year per person.
- Using the phone or videoconferencing to avoid four car
journeys could save £150 year.
- Reducing paper use by only printing when necessary - and
printing double sided - could save £20 a year each per person.
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