Green Boot Camp
We have been running a green boot camp for the last five years which consists of a week-long series of events, presentations and talks to engage, inform and educate staff in sustainability issues. Recent boot camps included interesting talks about embodied carbon, a presentation from the sustainability manager at Crossrail talking about embedding sustainability into infrastructure and Kristina Arsenievich from KLH Sustainability presenting on the timber framed Believe in Better building at Sky plc new head office.

Wellbeing days
The week also included a ‘wellbeing’ day which provided staff the opportunity to have massages and use the ‘smoothie bike’, and also a ‘leave your car at home day’. We have found the support from other UK-GBC members invaluable in running the boot camp.

Reduction in waste
Another step towards a more sustainable office is we have reduced daily waste to landfill from 10 waste bags, to a maximum of two, despite doubling the number of staff. This has been achieved by a number of measures including removing waste paper bins, having a clear desk policy, automated double sided printing and a ‘follow-me’ printing system which requires staff to go to the printer in order to initiate printing. A great example of how changing occupant behaviour can have a huge impact on the environment.

Travel emission database (TED)
We have developed a travel database specific tool for capturing the journeys taken by its staff every day, both in terms of their commute and any business travel. We encourage more sustainable travel through a combination of reporting on data and in-house initiatives and in doing so have reduced their CO2 emissions associated with travel by more than 20% in 2012 compared to that in 2008.