Green Office Action Plan
Since signing the Nottingham Declaration for Climate Change on 15th June 2007 we have made significant progress towards producing an agreed Green Office Action Plan, borne out of UK Climate Change Programme and The Buy Recycled Code.
Development of the Green Office Action Plan began in 2008 and since then it has gone through many iterations and reviews to ensure it remains focussed.
The Green Office Action Plan details steps to be taken to make sure that our offices in Oldham, and all work carried out there, is as sustainable as possible, reducing resource use and ultimately the impact on the environment. The Action Plan has 8 key focus areas:
- paper usage;
- waste minimisation;
- recycling;
- water usage;
- energy usage for heating and cooling;
- energy usage for lighting;
- office electrical equipment; and
- business related transport.
As the Nottingham Declaration pledge includes contributing to the UK Climate Change Programme with an important first step of benchmarking carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions we are concentrating on establishing measurable targets which allow us to actively monitor our progress. As such we are now measuring:
- the amount of paper used by monitoring the amount and frequency of paper purchasing;
- the amount of gas used by taking monthly readings of the 4 gas boilers in our offices; and
- the amount of electricity used by taking regular reading of the 4 electric meters at our offices.
Key Achievements
Through the development of the Green Office Action Plan GMWDA has taken steps towards greater sustainability. Though not an exhaustive list the following highlights some of our key achievements:
-
All general printing paper purchased has 100% recycled content. - Scrap paper is used in the fax machine.
- Recycling and Shred-It bins are located throughout the office.
- Black and white ink is a preference with a draft quality
- Toilet cistern displacement bags have been fitted to all toilets to reduce our water use.
- Push-button taps have been fitted in all toilets to reduce our water use.
- We have installed plumbed in water coolers in a move away from bottled water coolers. This allows us to get chilled filtered water straight from the mains, eliminating the need to transport heavy bottles of water across the country.
- We have moved to paperless billing as well as paperless sumission forms for various in-house admin
- We have had an energy efficent bolier fitted
We are proud of the progress we have made so far and through continual review of the Green Office Action Plan and measurement of our progress we hope to take even greater steps towards a green and sustainable office.
