TCHC offers practical business and workforce development solutions across all industry sectors.

Their current portfolio includes a mixture of commercially available training courses as well as publicly funded training and advice services.

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Ben Thornhill of TCHC wrote the following report:

In Britain work-related transport and workplace activities account for roughly two-thirds of our CO2 emissions. For many businesses a 20% cut in energy would be easy to achieve, and the savings made could equate to as much as a 5% increase in sales. So why do businesses in the UK seem so reluctant to ‘go green’

A lot more people are recycling and reducing energy use and waste in their own homes, but many people do not transfer this green enthusiasm to the workplace, even though this is where it could make the most impact. Many companies merely pay lip service to the fact that they are environmentally conscious and have it written somewhere in their company handbook, but often that is as far as it goes.

Is it because business leaders subscribe to the common misconception that green measures are expensive to implement? Is it because people think that they just don’t have time to think about such things during their busy day? Do people worry about how their colleagues might react if they suggest a change to their way of working? Or is it that nobody is made responsible? I would guess that it is a mixture these reasons.

So how do we solve the problem? Well, first of all the management team have to get on board. A worrying statistic is that 74% of bosses in small businesses (those with fewer than 50 employees) in the UK have not yet considered modifying their processes to become more environmentally friendly. To make significant energy savings and a shift toward greener working practices there has to be a real change in ethos and that has to come from the top.

To really become a greener company, green thinking has to come into almost every decision from what type of paper to order, whether to have a water cooler down to what kind of cleaning products you use, so if you have a management team, who always encourage greener practices, then you have a great chance of getting somewhere.

Secondly, you will have to address the question of responsibility. If you make energy saving and environmental policy part of people’s job description, then you are far more likely to see some action. Again, this has to come from the management, but if they can make somebody responsible for recycling and ensuring all lights and computers are switched off at the end of the day you are far more likely to make some quick progress.

To conclude, I think the main obstacle to UK business becoming greener is that there aren’t enough good examples for people to follow at the moment and small business leaders in particular are not aware of the savings to be made. Once business leaders start to catch on and see the difference that a lot of small, simple changes can make then I hope the process will start to snowball.

I’m sure most of you have seen the IBM advert where an employee is pitching a new green strategy to her boss and as soon as she mentions the figures he lights up with joy. Well, perhaps once you have seen a few statistics, you may feel the same way and start making some changes around your office today:
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• £7,000 – the average amount that a small business could save if it was more energy efficient

• 50% – is the percentage increase in carbon output through installing air conditioning

• 20% – is the percentage of energy a business could save by simply turning all appliances off overnight and making full use of natural light during the day
• 40% – is the percentage of businesses that have not looked for a better deal on their energy provider since the market was deregulated

• 60% – is the percentage of waste in the UK that goes straight into landfill sites, compared to just 20% in Switzerland, and a lot of this waste is coming from business.

Now here are a few tips on what your business can do to start making savings whilst reducing your carbon footprint:

• Turning off appliances, lighting and climate control systems that are not in use and ensure that everything is turned off overnight and over the weekend

• Try not to use air conditioning. If you have some effective dark coloured blinds/shutters and keep the windows closed then the office should remain cool. Opening the windows is a common mistake. You would never see it when visiting a hot country!

• Recycle. Provide different bins for different types of waste and arrange for a collection each week or designate someone within the company to do it to save money

• Don’t use a water cooler. This uses extra energy to keep the water cool and then there is the delivery miles and use of plastic containers on top of this. Simply put a few large bottles of tap water in the fridge for people to use

• Use a kettle for hot drinks instead of a machine and get staff to bring in their own mugs to save on waste. If you only boil the amount of water you need then the kettle will use much less energy

• Print fewer documents and where possible print 2-sided and in black and white. Saving documents electronically saves a huge amount of paper. Printing 2-sided will save you 50% again and printing in black and white will save you even more money

• Reduce travel by video/teleconferencing where possible. Flying/driving all over the place for face-to-face meetings drastically increases your carbon footprint and your travel expenses

• Arrange car shares and have cycle-friendly facilities where possible. Many colleagues will live close enough to car share, but they may not know it. Encourage sharing lifts to and from work. People can also be put off cycling to work, particularly the ladies, if there is no shower or a place to lock-up their bike

• Put your office on a green electricity tariff and, where possible, turn the heating down a couple of degrees and turn off radiators in rooms that are not being used

• Buy environmentally-friendly cleaning products, stationery, paper, light bulbs and any other green products that you can think of. Low energy (CFL) light bulbs are a particularly good one. CFLs use five times less energy, last up to 12 times longer and could save UK consumers around £1.2 billion in electricity bills per year.

So for a very minimal investment, you could start seeing some serious return in just a few short months.