Best Foot Forward

BFF client Sheppard Robson has been awarded the "Most Sustainable Practice" award from Architecture Journal. The award is sponsored by another BFF client InterfaceFlor. In 2008 Sheppard Robson commissioned BFF to assess the carbon and ecological footprints of their annual office activities in London and Manchester. The results from the study have enabled them to develop a strategy to monitor and reduce their footprint in the future.

Having completed a carbon and ecological footprint study of a Worksop school for Balfour Beatty's Transform Schools initiative, BFF were recently invited to present the results to the student council and facilitate a student workshop on how to best reduce the school's footprint. After some fantastic discussions and ideas the Portland School students came up with a wide range of possible actions including introducing a vegetarian day in the canteen, emailing newsletters rather than printing, encouraging staff to car share one day per week and switching from bus travel to walking or cycling. We look forward to catching up with the students of Portland School in the future to see how their actions are making a change.

BFF Principal Consultant Simon Miller was invited to chair and present a session on footprinting at Sustainable Business - the Event, held a couple of weeks ago at the NEC, Birmingham. A video of the session is available here, but unfortunately the slides aren’t shown so some of his points lack the supporting visuals. However, it is a rare chance to see Simon in a suit and tie...

The spirit behind the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) legislation is laudable, but its introduction is baffling some UK organisations. The idea of legislation that not only puts a (low) price on carbon but also raises it to the board agenda through competitive public league tables is to be applauded. However, the piecemeal carbon legislative framework that we now have in the UK with the EU ETS, CCAs, and CCLs means the implementation of the new CRC risks causing additional confusion for environmental managers. As a result BFF is now advising more and more clients on CRC responsibilities, and on Thursday 4th June we are managing a high profile workshop covering practical examples of meeting CRC requirements, with extended reporting into a wider carbon management strategy. BFF has also developed our online carbon management tool called Footprinter™ to support CRC reporting.

Demand for BFF’s online footprint management system - Footprinter™ - is growing rapidly. As a result, we are now recruiting two people to join our Footprinter™ development team. Interested?

1. We are looking for a Business Manager to lead our partnership development work and marketing activities.
2. To bolster our techncial capabilities we are also looking to recruit a software Application Developer.

Details of both jobs are available here.

The basis of a good education, so they say, is the three R’s: reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic. A different set of R’s also crop up in the waste management hierarchy: reduce, reuse and recycle. We were reminded last week that if we are to conserve natural resources, and decarbonise our economy, the waste hierarchy also needs to be considered in the cold light of some robust ‘rithmetic. The occasion was a scientific media briefing to debunk some of the myths surrounding recycling which was organised by WRAP, the UK’s leading waste and resources programme.

BFF has been invited to open and chair a session called ‘Cutting the Carbon’ at the Sustainable Business Conference. As part of the Sustainabilitylive! exhibition at the NEC Birmingham, BFF’s Simon Miller will be presenting and answering questions on footprint methodologies and applications. The session starts at 10.30 on Thursday 21st May, with more information available here.

The continued rise in popularity of product carbon footprinting has caught the attention of the 'traditional' Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) community. In the editorial of the latest edition of the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment the editor of their new section on carbon footprinting makes some interesting points on the threats and opportunities this latest 'fashion' presents to the LCA community.

Defra has launched The Quality Assurance Scheme for Carbon Offsetting - an new initiative aimed at increasing consumers’ understanding of the role of offsetting in tackling climate change and helping them to make informed purchases of good-quality offsets.

From BFF's point-of-view, whilst offsetting should not be the primary contributor to a carbon reduction strategy, it can be part of the equation.

From April 2010 around 5,000 businesses will need to comply with the ‘little known and complex’ (according to the FT) piece of legislation – the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC). It is a mandatory ‘cap-and-trade’ scheme which will apply to any business using more than 6,000 MWh of electricity. It means that businesses will have to carry out a ‘carbon footprint’ of their operations, buy enough ‘allowances’ to cover those emissions, then try to recoup a percentage of that cost by being placed high in the CRC emissions reductions league table. To encourage action, by year 5 of the scheme, the best performers will get back their allowance expenditure and a 50% bonus - while the worst will only get back half their money.