Our Carbon Footprint

 

Introduction

Cambridgeshire Horizons is supporting the delivery of low carbon infrastructure and is also reducing its own business carbon footprint.

The challenge

In May 2010, Cambridgeshire Horizons Board members agreed that Cambridgeshire Horizons should sign up to the Cambridge Climate Change Charter and set a target of reducing our carbon emissions by 10% by the end of March 2011. This target was set by a national campaign called 10:10.

Key Projects

• Travel to work - We worked closely with Travel for Work (TfW) to update the Travel Plan for Cambridgeshire Horizons, and won an award for our work. Where appropriate, our staff are car sharing, working from home and working from Touchdown Centres to reduce carbon to get to work.
• Travel for work - We investigated how much travel we do for work, such as meetings, where those meetings are held and checked if we are car sharing with partners wherever possible. Our administrative team arranged teleconferences instead of having staff who have already met travelling to meet up for short periods of time.
• Paper consumption - We raised the profile of "think before you print" to all members of staff and created an e-advice sheet on which printers are most efficient to use and a guide on how to use booklet printing.
• Energy - We worked closely with our landlord to try and think of innovative ways to keep our energy consumption down. As we shared a building we needed to work together to find these carbon savings.
• Changing habits - To ensure that all of the above projects can be achieved we changed our habits. To do this we had to understand the impact of not reducing our carbon footprint. All staff have attended either a Carbon Footprint workshop or presentation. This has helped engage our team further to show how easy it is to change your every day habits in order to make a real difference to our environment.

Achievements

In October 2010 Cambridgeshire Horizons announced to its staff that a reduction of just over 18% has already been achieved. They are now striving to make even more savings and hope to reach a 20% reduction in our carbon footprint by 31st March 2011.

Cambridgeshire Horizons have recently been named in the Travel for Work October e-newsletter as a company who are taking great steps to reduce their travel to work. Alex Plant, Chief Executive, has been commended by Travel for Work for car sharing along with other Chief Executives in Cambridgeshire. To see that news article click here.