SustainIT Solutions Newsletter February 2010

Spotlight on

Carbon Reduction Commitment

Launching in April 2010, the CRC is the UK's first mandatory carbon emission trading scheme. Around 5,000 large, energy using organisations will be required to participate. Organisations that consume more than 6000 MWh of half-hourly metered electricity from January to December 2008, which at today's prices equates to an electricity bill of around £500,000 per year will be affected.

If you feel that these regulations will affect your business and you require more information from SustainIT Solutions on software solutions designed to help capture your environmental data please get in touch.

Welcome to February's newsletter

Our newsletter is designed to keep you up to date with what's happening at SustainIT and the world around us. The big news this month is that new figures demonstrate how many organisations have realised the value of 'Green Hosting'. It is clear that companies are becoming increasingly aware of their impact on the environment, even those that may be sceptical about global warming. This is because consumers are showing that they care how conscientious businesses are; how they manage their emissions, throughout the supply chain, and how important their environmental or 'green' policies are to the organisation. They are starting to opt for greener choices and those companies that are more environmentally responsible.

With the growing concern over climate change, companies are being asked to monitor their energy use and carbon emissions, try and reduce them, to minimise the negative impact on our planet. However, many organisations do not achieve senior management 'buy in' for the perceived significant change in new procedures required for their operations to cut emissions as they feel this change could be a major commercial threat and affect the organisation negatively.

Green Hosting is when your server provider ensures that all energy and resources needed to run your hosting service are from renewable energy sources and this is becoming an easy way to cut carbon emissions without having to massively change working practices. This means that all power will come from solar, wind, hydro or other clean energy sources and not from traditional power plants. Those companies with sufficient resources may run their own turbines or generators or they may work with an external company to ensure that all their power comes from a renewable energy source.

Green Hosting is important because not only does it have a positive effect on the environment, but organisations won't notice any difference - and customers will be impressed too. Even one computer left on overnight for a year creates enough CO2 to fill a double decker bus so it can be an exceptionally important change for the environment.

If you are interested in Green Hosting and would like to understand how to switch energy to renewable sources, commit to become sustainable or create sustainable strategies get in contact with SustainIT on 01275 774168 or email info@sustainitsolutions.co.uk.

Developing Employee Engagement in Sustainability

An organisation that may be undertaking new Sustainability strategies require profound commitment from employees throughout the period of change. Hiring practices, internal cultural development efforts, and the attention, responsiveness and resources necessary to achieve a high level of employee engagement are critical. Without a high rate of employee engagement, the organisation will not achieve average objectives, much less the initiatives that will accelerate sustainability achievement.

Low employee engagement will affect an organisation by reducing productivity, decreasing profitability, undermine customer satisfaction and sales and impede strategic success. These employees tend to be less open to organisational change. In short there is a clearly demonstrated link between employee engagement and organisational growth and sustainability.

Most organisations today are developing sustainability strategies in an uncertain future. High levels of employee engagement will be critical in this future.

Senior Management must win employee "buy-in" to their sustainability strategies and their plan to make the organisational changes necessary for implementation of sustainability initiatives. "Buy-in" begins with an engaged employee and wins support for the new vision and the steps required throughout the organisation to achieve it.

Any organisation can increase the level of employee engagement towards their sustainability strategy. Here are ten tips to help you improve the level of employee engagement in your enterprise.

1. Make employee engagement part of your organisational culture;
   
2. Communicate the sustainability strategy across the organisation, and listen actively to the insights, experience and perspective of every employee at every level of the organisation;
   
3. Value and acknowledge the meaningful work of each employee and remind them that their work contributes in a significant way to the success of your organisation;
   
4. Earn trust every day by clearly and consistently sharing the direction of the organisation and that employees can help senior management achieve success;
   
5. Emphasise career development. People rewarded for increased skills and knowledge are more engaged;
   
6. Create confidence in the future. Engaged employees have confidence that more sustainable futures will lead to success. Confidence results from consistent and appropriate senior management;
   
7. Align the organisation with strategic goals to help employees at every level of the organisation understand how their work contributes to the success of the company;
   
8. Align employee performance with sustainability goals so that senior management can work with employees to develop meaningful goals that clearly advance organisational structure;
   
9. Clarify the new sustainability culture to employees to ensure that each individual understands their role and value; and
   
10. Manage employee engagement. When employees are able to build a high level of employee engagement and develop a strong culture of engagement, productivity, profit and perspective can be expected to improve throughout your enterprise.

SustainIT software Solutions offers a window into the next level of response for businesses committed to becoming sustainable and creating sustainability strategies. If you think this subject will impact your business please get in contact with Anthony Peake on 01275 774168 or email a.peake@sustainitsolutions.co.uk.

Next month we will focus on how to engage your senior management!

Local Washing is the new Greenwashing

As we know some organisations are often seen to jump onto various bandwagons or trends and market their products in such a way that consumers are often led to believe things that are not necessarily as they seem. When environmentalism (read “ECO”) first became popular and consumers wanted to spend their money on eco goods and services, the market place immediately turned to greener products and continues to grow in that aspect today. We all know that not every product can have an environmental benefit and some are deceptively marketed to show that they are. This marketing is what is known as “greenwashing”. Now, however the new “greenwash” appears to be “localwash”, the former was originally a play on “whitewashing”.

Over the last decade or so, we have seen a strong consumer movement towards eating and buying local. Big brands cottoned on and have looked for ways to cater to this new consumer desire. Some localwashing corporate initiatives have been ridiculous. A globally distributing sauce-maker, owned by a London based corporation, has launched an "eat local" branding campaign in Canada, apparently based around the notion that you should eat their sauce with your locally grown produce. This is confusing in many ways, the least of which is in implying that "eating locally" is the same thing as "eating nationally" in a country of some 3.9 million square miles. There is a huge debate regarding what does “local” actually mean. Local to who? How far is local? I think most people will agree that 3.9 million square miles doesn’t represent local.

“Localists”  believe that shopping local is the number one thing you can do to help keep your local economy strong and keep environmental impact minimised. So, if you are actively conscious about where your products come from, you can then make an informed decision on what and how you buy.

Ever wanted to flush your reports down the toilet ...?

A miracle working machine called the "White Goat" by an innovative Japanese company is an early contender for the Gadget Show! It directly recycles office paper into toilet paper and users need only add water along with any embarrassing e-mail print outs or unwanted reports they need shredded; and outcomes toilet paper, possibly of dubious softness.

A built in shredder moves the paper onto a pulper where it gets dissolved in water. The pulp becomes wet paper and is eventually dried and rolled up into ready-to-use toilet paper.

The machine takes half an hour to produce one neatly wrapped toilet roll and uses the equivalent of 40 sheets of standard office paper per roll. It is claimed that it will save 60 cedar trees each year (but gives no indication of the number of visits you're supposed to have!). White Goat reportedly goes on sale this summer. I want one!!!

Click here for a video