HEADLINING CLIMATE NEUTRALITY
The communications and marketing sector has unique opportunities not just to reduce the footprint of their own businesses, but to use their communication skills to influence many others—clients, employees and the public—to reduce theirs. As the environmental campaigner Sir Jonathan Porritt once put it, the sector has a large climate brainprint.
In 2007, one of Australia’s biggest media groups, News Lim- ited, followed its parent company, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, in pledging to become climate neutral by 2010.
To help achieve that goal, News Limited launched a programme called One Degree, an initiative to reduce greenhouse gases across the business, and to raise awareness of climate change among the company’s staff and the broader community.
At the heart of the One Degree programme is a tough target for reducing its own emissions—by 20 per cent between 2007 and 2010. This involves preventing 30,000 tonnes of carbon diox- ide from reaching the atmosphere—the equivalent of taking 7,500 cars permanently off the road.
reducing leakage of compressed and humidified air.
News Limited has looked at its operations across Australia from top to bottom, and come up with more than 90 projects to reduce emissions. In some cases, looking at the inefficiencies of a single process can produce a “big hit”. For example, at its Mile End print centre in Adelaide, News Limited found it could prevent more than 2,000 tonnes of CO2
emissions by
According to News Limited’s sustainability manager Dr Tony Wilkins, the efficiency gains identified so far have resulted in an annual saving of about 1.5 million Australian dollars.
“Climate neutrality should not be seen as a difficult goal, but as a milestone on the longer path to tackling climate change,” Wilkins argues. To complement the One Degree programme, News Limited launched a competition amongst its staff called “How eco would you go?”, offering a Toyota Prius hybrid car to the winner.
The competition aimed to encourage staff to think about ways in which their actions impact climate change, and to make small changes in their day-to-day behaviour both at home and in the workplace to reduce their own footprints.
To enter the competition, staff pledged to undertake 14 days of action to reduce carbon emissions and to inspire others in original and sustainable ways. They could pledge to take action at home, at work and/or in the community. But the actions had to have some positive impact on climate change and had to be something that could be sustained to make a long-term difference.
The competition drew more than 300 pledges from News Limited’s staff, ranging from riding a bicycle to work, to starting a community vegetable garden and sharing laundry loads with flatmates.
“We had people looking at all aspects of their lives—from home, with the family or flatmates, to at work and in the community,” says News Limited’s Chief Executive John Hartigan. “Each person’s circumstance was different, but almost without exception they found that cutting their carbon footprint also saved money, encouraged their personal fitness and, in many cases, gave them back precious time.”
The winner of the competition, printer Carl Winter from Perth, made changes in every aspect of his life. He planted vegetable gardens, installed rainwater tanks, turned off the heat, switched to energy efficient lighting, started compost- ing and making bread, ditched the dishwasher and installed a wind turbine to provide power. The family cut back on their car use and shopped in bulk to save time, travel and pack- aging. At work, Winter replaced foam cups with mugs—his print team alone is preventing 34 cups a month from ending up in landfill.
But Carl Winter did not stop at changing his own behaviour. He drew up “Carl’s Going Green Checklist”, and has distributed it to hundreds of people door-to-door in his own
39
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50