Last year much of our Green Impact work was hindered by our accommodation – the team was housed in 2 old buildings at Favell Road and Brook Hill with everyone in small offices. The buildings had storage heaters so it was more or less essential to have additional heaters throughout the building and last year was a bitter winter. We have now moved to an open plan office at new Spring House – it’s taken a bit of time but we have just about got the temperature of the office set to maximise comfort for everyone (the chilly people had to move away from the air conditioning units in the summer!)
Several people had brought heaters with them so our Green Impact champion set up an amnesty and asked everyone to return heaters and book out them out if and when they needed them. We did have to go and ask some individuals who did not want to give up their heaters. However, we were all surprised at the overall haul – 12 individual heaters!
Needless to say we Green Impacters were not overly popular with those we had to prise heaters from. We’ve tried explaining that the overall heating thermostats work better if there are not pockets of heat coming from additional heaters and the majority of staff recognise this move as a good thing for everyone. We’ve also emphasised the health and safety issues – imagine our shock when we discovered that some people had heaters switched on under their desks!
Hopefully as the temperature stabilises the doubters will agree with us that it is better not to have lots of individual heaters – and we all know that it is better for the environment to keep our energy consumption down.
We’ve kept some of the heaters just in case…. but they are located behind cupboards near the Green Impact champion so that they can only be used if booked out specifically.
So… Green Impact can seem tough at times but once you work it through there are often additional benefits as well as protecting our environment. Do you have any good examples of energy saving activities that also make the overall work environment more comfortable?