Delivering sustainable services is only possible if our staff teams are keen and environmentally aware. As part of the Sustainable Living Project the housing staff at the North Devon office took part in environmental training with Envision and have been monitoring and managing their energy, water and waste materials. This good practice is now being replicated across our other regional and project offices. Here are some of things we are doing:
- recycling in all our regional offices, our head office in Exeter can now recycle over 80% of all its waste paper and has recycling points on every floor
- piloting a travel to work strategy offering staff incentives to use park and ride, public transport and installing cycle lockers and showers
- the staff council agreed that only fair trade tea and coffee should be provided for staff at all our offices and projects
- taking part in environmental action days, staff from two regional offices took part in last year’s car free day winning a prize of £1,000 from Devon County Council’s travel wise initiative. This money contributed to installing a shower at the Exeter office. Events and presentations took place in offices and projects during this years Fair Trade fortnight and on World Environment Day
- at the last staff conference we dedicated the day to protecting the environment, asking each staff team to agree environmental priorities/actions for the next two years. We invited environmental community partners to set up stands and we ran green activities and staff consultation
- we have agreed a contract with EDF to supply green ‘renewable’ electricity to the majority of our offices and housing schemes
- housing management teams are recognising environmental actions in the workplace as part of their annual staff assessment.
