Taking the lead

As a Council we have committed ourselves to reduce our Carbon emissions, by 8.5% by 2011. We are keen to lead the way and demonstrate how emissions can be saved.

We recently launched a Green Buildings programme amongst staff, in which we aim to encourage council staff to become more sustainable at work in the following areas: - waste, recycling, water, energy and procurement.

To raise staff awareness we gathered staff ideas on how we could all save emissions. We attended staff events and got staff to sign up to a sustainable promise. By launching this programme we are able to monitor the efficiency of our buildings and see where improvements should be implemented.

Our Targets

• Reduce waste to 0.2 tonnes per person per year
• Recycle 80% of the total waste we produce
• Reduce paper use to seven reams per person per year
• Reduce energy consumption
• Reduce the amount of water used
• Increase cycle parking to 150% of the current number of cyclists for each building

Since introducing this project there has been an increase in staff awareness. We will continue to monitor each site for efficiency and work towards reaching our targets.

Read our Climate Change Strategy.