Adapted from an article by Rebecca Hurt, Behavioural Change Officer at Midlands energy hub. 

While a lot of the current focus is on the challenges around implementation of green infrastructure, it is important to remember that your team and their behaviour can also have a significant impact on reducing energy consumption on an individual basis. 

Behaviour change is about encouraging individuals to think about their behaviour and how it affects the workplace. Sustainable work practices can contribute to the overall success of a business or organisation by directly impacting the bottom line. The reduction in energy and waste disposal costs can amount to hundreds or thousands of pounds saved per company. 

Behaviour change activities engage colleagues to make positive adjustments in their day-to-day lives; this can have an impact on environmental objectives such as reducing plastic use, carbon footprint and waste. For example, Nottingham City Council recently hosted a twelve-week competition across its leisure centres, challenging them to reduce their electricity usage. The various changes teams implemented at the eight sites made carbon savings of 18.6 tonnes. With highly ambitious goals for a carbon neutral city by 2028 and a plastic free council by 2023, these will require individuals to make changes and empower colleagues to do the same. NCC have improved their green credentials further by generating over ONE MILLION kilowatt hours of solar power in 2018 alone, saving themselves over £110,000 in electricity costs.

Encouraging your team to engage in activities such as turning off the lights when they leave a room can have a huge impact on your bills and maintenance costs. Installing movement sensors to turn lights on and off can have a similar impact. 

Achieving behavioural change can be just as important as policy changes and will often influence how policy is delivered.

Epic Global group as a company is striving to be carbon neutral and aims to cut our carbon footprint by 25% by 2025. Not only do we indirectly reduce carbon emissions by offering our customers green technology and energy and cost-saving solutions such as LED lighting. We also strive to reduce our energy use within our own work practices. We already have one hybrid vehicle and aim to be using a fleet of totally hybrid vehicles in the future to be able to work cleanly in cities around the globe. We facilitate remote and flexible working practices for staff to reduce the amount of energy used travelling to and from their place of work. We also recycle as much waste from jobs on-site as possible further reducing our impact on the environment.

If you are interested in implementing behavioural change in your organisation, a good place to start could be the Carbon Literacy Project. Carbon Literacy is “an awareness of the carbon dioxide costs and impacts of everyday activities, and the ability and motivation to reduce emissions, on an individual, community and organisational basis”.

You can find out more about it here https://carbonliteracy.com.

If you would like some more information on the renewable and workplace efficiency services that Epic Global Group Ltd  provide then give us a call on 01432 341 234