Climate scheme forces office workers to go green

Ben Webster, Environment Editor

Your boss summons you to a meeting to discuss your poor performance. Your offence was far worse than absenteeism or being rude to clients.
You have been detected wasting the company’s, and the planet’s, resources: last night you went home without switching off your computer monitor.
This is the reality for hundreds of staff working at the London headquarters of Land Securities, Britain’s largest property company. Each night all monitors are checked and a yellow card is placed on any left on standby. A second offence triggers a red card and a manager calls in the culprit and delivers a verbal warning.
Land Securities is one of a growing number of employers trying to establish “ethical offices”, where staff are no longer encouraged to behave in an environmentally friendly way but are forced to do so.

About 5,000 larger employers will, from April, be required to purchase allowances to cover their carbon dioxide emissions from electricity and gas usage. The scheme, known as the Carbon Reduction Commitment, will include publication of annual league tables showing best and worst performing companies in terms of emissions reduction. Land Securities, which leases 100 office buildings in London, has identified dozens of energy-wasting office habits and is asking tenants to sign new agreements to change their behaviour.
It found one of the most wasteful practices is the addition of glass-fronted private offices on an open-plan floor. This disrupts the sensors that control air conditioning and results in excessive heating or cooling.
Dave Farebrother, environmental director of Land Securities, said: “People put in these partitions because they want to feel important but they can waste lots of energy.”
Tenants are also being asked to move all staff still working after 6pm to desks in one small section of the building. The lights and air conditioning in the rest of the building will then be switched off. “It is very wasteful to have one or two people dotted around on each floor. We need to get all those working late in one space,” Mr Farebrother said.
Companies are also being asked to ban personal bins to reduce landfill and improve recycling. Staff will have to collect waste in a pile on their desks and carry it once or twice a day to a “recycling hub.”
Mr Farebrother said: “People made out it was the end of the world when we took away their bins but after two weeks they had adjusted.” Boots found that the amount of waste sent to landfill fell by a third after it banned personal bins for its 2,000 staff at its Nottingham headquarters. Richard Ellis, head of corporate social responsibility at Boots, said: “People who recycle at home sometimes don’t bother at work because they think it is someone else’s problem. Removing bins has encouraged people to bring their home behaviour to the workplace.”
Some offices now have large TV screens in their lift lobbies displaying consumption of electricity, gas and water and comparing it with the previous day’s performance. The screen at New Street Square, near Holborn, Central London, which is home to several law firms, also calculates hourly CO2 emissions.
The screens have raised awareness and prompted some companies to make small adjustments to office temperature. Staff tend to accept the change without complaint because they see the reduction in emissions instantly as they wait to board a lift.
Land Securities plans to rank floors in its buildings according to their emissions. However, it said some “blue chip tenants” were resisting the move because they feared being embarrassed by the results.