… protects, promotes and enhances the environment

What action can businesses take to reduce their impact on the environment?

Posted 16-10-07 at 6:02 pm

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  1. RECYCLING
    My office, and I suspect many others, generate large amounts of waste that could be recycled. We are a member of a paper recycling scheme but have to throw away plastic bottles and aluminium cans as there is not a cost-effective way of recycling them. Yes, we can pay companies to collect this sort of waste but I think that local government could do more to encourage companies - either subsidising the cost of collection or providing more bottle/plastic/can recycling facilities in the area.

    ENERGY
    Far too often I see offices with all lights blazing at midnight. It’s possible that some people are still working but I suspect that the majority of those offices are empty and have been for some time. In our office we have a policy of last person out switches off the lights (and our cleaners are aware of this and do likewise) but other offices clearly don’t have the same policy. I’d like to see some kind of campaign to encourage switching off lights/equipmant overnight where possible.
    Secondly, how many offices are there in the City with low efficiency air conditioning and heating systems? New buildings hopefully have more efficient systems and better thermal insulation but there must be hundreds of small businesses in old buildings that could benefit from better thermal insulation and ventilation. Perhaps a grant to encourage these companies to improve insulation could reduce their overall energy usage?

    TRANSPORT
    I am lucky to live close enough to where I work that I can walk and generally do so. Before this I always took public transport. There are still however many people who drive into work in the City simply because they can and a daily charge of GBP30 (congestion charge and car parking) is no barrier to them. We need to take more steps to squeeze private cars off the roads in the City in favour of cycle lanes and bus lanes. The Mayor has already taken good steps in this direction but could do more in my opinion.

    Worker (45)

  2. 1. Get firms to turn their lights off! We have lights that automatically do so after a period when there has been no movement.

    2. Compulsory shredding and recycling for all firms above a certain size. I have to do it at home. Why not at work.

    3. The only way to reduce traffic congestion is to ban types of traffic at all/some times. The congestion charge will not achieve this. Why not make delivery vans only deliver at night and ban cars during the day?

    However, The City is the primary wealth generator of the economy. It’s important not to get so caught up in being green, that we lose our cepmptitive advantage. Generating increased wealth = increased taxes which can be put to “green” initiatives. The pollution on Hong Kong makes your eyes sting but look at the growth…..

    Worker (45)

  3. I work in small company that hires studio space in a complex in the city. The complex that we hire space from is reasonably cheap, which therefore affords a great diversity of businesses and individuals to work here that I feel enhances the experiences and cultural diversity fo people in the city. We are small and borderline in our costs, and I am dissappointed, along with others at the limited recucling facilities availabel to us. We cannot afford to ‘pay’ companies to take our recyclable waste, and currently we divide the recycling between us and cart it to our own homes and add it to our collections. The city is a varied place, but I think support for the range of businesses there could be wider and more encompassing. There are networking opportunities available, I would like to know how possible would it be for us to add our recycling to larger collections in some of the huge offices that I pass, I know there are security/ finance issues here, but could we share more collections and facilities?

    Worker (34)

  4. Big companies should consider introducing travel planning. People don’t always choose the most sustainable way to travel because they don’t know about the best way to get to where they are going. While the TfL Journey Planner is good, how many motorists know about this?

    Worker (39)

  5. Reduce, or better still remove, the number of lorries delivering water to office coolers or supplies of bottled water. Every day any number of companies are blocking traffic and adding to pollution to deliver something that Friends of the Earth described as ‘environmental insanity’. Bottled water is indefensible in a static office when mains water in this country is so good. If tap water isn’t good enough then use mains-fed filter systems. We use an in-house bottling machine from The Pure Water Co and have never looked back.

    Resident (35)

  6. I would strongly support the idea of sharing access to recycling facilities. Working in a smallish office in a multi-occupied building, it would be expensive for us to pay to recycle just our limited amount of, say, paper waste, but a miniscule amount if the building’s managing agent were to provide this facility for the whole building via the service charge.

    Member of The City Together (54)