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Go Fair Trade At The Office
Fairtrade is about better prices, decent working conditions, sustainable development, and decent terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. By switching your workplace to Fairtrade certified tea, coffee and other products, you make a positive difference to the lives of farmers and workers in some of the world’s poorest countries.
So who’s the person whose job it is to stock up with tea and coffee at the office ? Or bananas and biscuits. Talk to them about switching the products they stock to fairly traded ones. True, it might be more complicated than finding one person to make that decision (it usually is) but ask around, find out who really decides and whether anyone has a problem with making the switch. Maybe donate some fairly traded products yourself – so people can discover for themselves they taste just as good.
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Recycle Your Old Mobile
Ever thought of recycling your old mobile?
Cadmium from one mobile phone battery is enough to pollute 600,000 litres of water – which would fill one third of an Olympic sized swimming pool!
But your mobile phone can be recycled – and easily. You can return it directly to over 1200 retail outlets throughout the UK (O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone) or collect a Freepost envelope in-store and send your unwanted handset and accessories to the Fonebak recycling centre (Virgin Mobile, Virgin Megastores, Currys, Dixons, The Link, PC World).
More information from Fonebak.
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Car Share (Save A Fortune Slash Your Emissions)
OK, it sounds a bit of a challenge: the hassle, the planning, the feeling of being reliant on someone else – or them on you. But by all accounts, deciding to car-share can be a really enjoyable experience, not just for the social benefits but the financial ones. And those nice ‘I’m doing my bit’ for planet earth vibes.
Here’s the deal.
Private cars produce 10% of the UK’s total CO2 emissions. More than 80% of people who commute to work by car do so on their own – even though most of them live in the same towns and villages as many of their colleagues.
Two people, each with a car, can alternately leave one or other car at home and get a lift with the other. In one fell swoop petrol costs and harmful emissions are halved. Congestion is also eased – reducing journey times. Even better if three or four club together.
The average UK commuter drives 8.5 miles (13.7 km) to work each day at a cost of £2·04, a cost that can be halved through car sharing. That’s a saving of £240 per driver per year. At the same time, the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by 4%.
(We got most of the above information from a very handy piece by Richard Ghail on the BBC website which you can read here. )
Want to go Generous on your journeys to work? You can sign-up to start car-sharing for free.
The best-known organisation is called Liftshare and they report that the number of people sharing cars has soared since petrol prices have leapt.
In fact, never mind about the £240 saving estimated by Richard Ghail, Liftshare estimates that the average commuter can save around £1,000 a year by car sharing. Their site can also be used by non-drivers to find a lift, a great tool for anyone looking at improving their transport options.
So go Generous and Start Car-Sharing on your journey to work here.
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Save Paper and Packaging: Dump Your Junk Mail
You can now opt out of receiving unaddressed junk mail that gets inserted in Royal Mail deliveries by registering with their ‘OPT OUT’ service. Be aware that this service only relates to mail that does not have the recipients address on. Royal Mail is still legally obliged to deliver mail bearing an individuals address (such as ‘To the Occupier’ or any other generic recipient information).
But at least it’s a start.
Let’s say you get three or four unwanted leaflets/flyers a week – that’s 200 every year you now won’t get when you opt out. This is effectively a full-colour book that you won’t need to receive, somebody won’t need to print – and the postie doesn’t need to carry. (I can hear posties around the UK all cheering together right now …)
Opt Out Instructions from the Royal Mail here
Or email them: optout@royalmail.com
Or alternatively …
“Unwanted, unread direct mail has no place in anyone’s home. And if you’re not interested in receiving it, we will update our records for direct mail companies to view and adjust their lists as you request.”
That’s the promise of The Mailing Preference Service (MPS), a free service set up by the direct mail industry which ‘can remove your name from up to 95% of direct mail lists’.
Find out about the MPS and register to "stop your junk mail here: http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/mpsr/
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Will the last one to leave please turn off the lights...
… and the printers, and the fax machines, and the PCs left on standby, and the photocopiers and the phone rechargers …
According to research by Canon (the office equipment company), six million PCs will be left on in the office over the Christmas holidays , consuming 40 million kilowatt hours of electricity. Add that to the other hardware (photocopiers, printers etc) left on over the festive period and that’s enough power to microwave 268 million mince pies (that’s four each for every man, woman and child in the UK!), pumping 19,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a cost of £9m. Doesn’t sound great, does it?
In fact, whatever the time of year, switch off your kit before you head home. Perhaps you could remind your colleagues and even turn off their equipment if they have gone home and forgotten to do so. Come to think of it, you could even ask your head Finance honcho to send out a friendly email reminding staff to do this – after all, it will save your company money as well as reduce energy use. Wouldn’t it be good if there weren’t quite so many floors in all those office blocks blazing with light in the middle of the night ?
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Give Your Workplace A 'Generous' Makeover
Why not encourage your workplace to live a bit more generously? You don’t have to be an eco-bore to drop into the odd conversation with colleagues the benefits of turning off computers, monitors, lights and printers overnight. It’ll save lots of energy, your company will save money, and the planet will last longer. A ‘win win win’ situation!
- Turning your thermostat down by just 1°C can knock 10% off the cost of heating your office.
- Switching off a typical fluorescent light for one hour in each working day will save 30kg of carbon dioxide emissions annually.
- Lighting an empty office overnight wastes enough energy to heat water for 1000 cups of coffee.
- Switching off all non-essential office equipment (computers, printers, faxes, photocopiers and lights) overnight will save enough energy to drive a small car 100 miles.
- A PC monitor left on overnight wastes enough energy to laser print 800 pages.
- A PC left running for 24 hours per day will use £70 worth of electricity over 12 months.
- A photocopier left on overnight wastes enough energy to print 1500 A4 copies.
- A window left open overnight wastes enough energy to drive a small car 35 miles.
- Turning your thermostat down by just 1°C can knock 10% off the cost of heating your office.
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Use your computer to solve global problems
Switching off your computer saves energy, but if left on ‘sleep’ it can potentially help save lives.
Research scientists need people willing to run small, free, non-invasive software programmes that work like screensavers on their PCs. They run when your computer isn’t being used, and process research until you need your machine again. The project never interrupts your usual PC use, but it can help find a cure for cancer or process climate change predictions. Making something happen while you have forty winks? Sounds good!
Check it out at one of these addresses:
United Devices Cancer Research Project
BBC Climate Change Experiment -
Take A Mug To Work - don't use plastic
The UK produces 420 million tonnes of waste every year – enough to fill the Albert Hall in London every hour. Most of our household rubbish is disposed of in landfill sites, but this is set to change – new EU laws mean that if we don’t drastically reduce the amount we produce or recycle much more, we may need dozens of new incinerators.
Often, because it is more ‘convenient’, our work settings invite us to use disposable products – plastic cups for example. Resist the convenience! Embrace the environment! Avoid using disposable items whenever possible take a mug to work. Spread the word!
And if you’re feeling particularly generous take another mug in for a colleague.
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Ban the Bulb!
The ‘Ban the Bulb’ campaign site states:
“The energy wasted by incandescent light bulbs costs money, causes pollution and risks harmful climate change. The large-scale burning of fossil fuels to make energy has resulted in a build up of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. This is leading to a warming in average global temperatures and altering the behaviour of the world’s climate.”
It then goes on to suggest what we can do to support the phasing out of incandescent light bulbs. So, as we have a parallel Generous action to Switch To Energy Saving Lightbulbs, this action on Generous is really about taking up the political campaign by following up one of their suggestions. Committing to one of these is how you complete this Action.
1. Ask your local shops to stock energy-efficient light bulbs.
2. Support the phasing out, and eventual banning, of wasteful incandescent light bulbs!
3. Write to your member of parliament/congress and ask for energy efficiency to be given a greater priority.” -
Put Your Money Where Your Heart is (Bank Ethically)
Want to be a socially responsible investor? It’s no secret that many of traditional high-street banks – through their commercial trading divisions – end up financing the arms trade or investing in companies damaging the environment. Some still hold Third World debt.
As more and more people join the Generous community, we are responsible for more and more ‘funds’ – hundreds of millions a year – dual income households and all that. That’s a lot of dough. While some of it is already invested with ethical banks like the Co-operative, much of it is probably not. So we recommend two ethical banks to have a look at.
First a current account we recommend is from smile.co.uk, the Internet banking arm of the Co-operative Bank, the only UK clearing bank with an ethical policy.
Second, how about opening a savings account with Triodos.co.uk which ‘only works with organisations that benefit people and the environment.’ A Triodos Bank Social Investor Savings Account will ‘directly link your savings with organisations that benefit people and the environment, like organic farms, fairtrade companies and charities.’
