100 Days Carbon Clean-up Campaign
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 06.10.06
About 500 organisations from the UK have signed up for the 100 Days of Carbon Clean-Up campaign run by the Chartered Institution of Building Service Engineers (Cibse) with support from the Carbon Trust. The first day of the challenge was June 5th and it ends on September 12th. Fulcrum Consulting is one of the participants and they have written a first diary entry to document their progress in reducing their carbon emissions.
Some excerpts:
The first thing we plan to do is establish our benchmarks (i.e. our starting point). [...]We have been taking monthly meter readings for gas, electricity and water to calculate our annual consumption. This data is not quite as complete as it might be due to the challenges involved with remembering to take monthly readings from meters which are not all easily accessible (chairs and torches are required!). [This is yet another example of why smart meters are important. -Ed]
Ideas proposed so far include:
- Buying plug-in energy monitors to work out consumption of various office appliances
- Turning off all the lights; it's summer, we have big windows and it's bright enough without them
- Switching off all boiling water dispensers at night and weekends - we'll just have to wait while they heat up in the mornings
- Finding out how much our PCs, screens, photocopiers etc use in stand-by mode and whether we can optimise their "hibernate" settings when not in use
- Cutting food-miles travelled by the office "daily fruit"
- Ensuring the default for all our printing and photocopying is set to double-sided
- Analyse how much we recycle and whether this could be increased
- Do a transport audit on how staff get to work and site/meetings
We'll keep an eye on the 100 Days Carbon Clean-Up campaign as it unfolds, but you don't need to be part of an organized campaign to make your home and workplace more efficient. In most places, the current setup is so wasteful that there are many low-hanging fruits which could result in substantive energy and monetary savings over the long-term (remember, efficiency works forever).
Related posts ::David Suzuki's Eco-Friendly Office Tactics, ::How To: Energy Efficiency Advisor Web Site, ::Discussion: Investing in Efficiency - Car or House?, ::New York Times Article About Energy Efficiency, ::Mortgages That Reward Energy Efficiency, ::Cut Your Gas Consumption in Half in One Day, ::We Want Fuel Economy Feedback in All Cars
For a lot of information about efficiency, visit the Rocky Mountain Institute's website.
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- Universities Taking the Initiative to Reduce Their Carbon Footprint
- CAT Surgeries Offer Impartial Advice on Alternative Energy
- Ramsar Wetland Convention Meeting in Korea: Peat, Bogs And Poetry
- World’s Fastest Electric Superbike: 125 MPH & No Carbon Emissions
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