The key test of sustainability in business (as in life) is very simple:

Can you meet your needs without harming the ability of others, including future generations, to meet their own?

The test follows the same principle as the one which (hopefully) stopped you helping yourself to all the roast potatoes at Christmas dinner before your Granny had some. In the real world it’s a bit more complicated: you have to work out where the “potatoes” are, how many…

Continue

Click here for Marwan's blog about his trial with the electric bike.

 

[link updated 24 October, apologies it didn't work before]

On a drizzly Winter’s day the other week, something quite remarkable happened. More than 20 people pedalled furiously inside Stirling University’s Atrium, yet travelled precisely nowhere.

Yet in a different sense they travelled huge distances. To a point, in fact, where they literally saw the light.

How did this happen?

On our Power Bike, of course! A place where people cycle hard and fast but go nowhere because the back wheel is lifted off the ground to power a…

Continue

Hand dryers (Airblades or Xlerator in particular).

 

Now here’s why it doesn’t matter:

The carbon emissions of drying hands is between 3 and 20 grammes of CO2e (all greenhouse gases converted into a carbon dioxide equivalent). Assuming you wash your hands on average twice a day whilst at work (and that you work for approx 245 days a year) the annual handwashing…

Continue

"A business is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin.

Methods have to change.

Focus has to change.

Values have to change.…

Continue

When it comes to choosing energy reduction measures in our homes and businesses, we often start with things that take the least amount of effort. In "the trade" this is called the "low hanging fruit" as it's the things we can pick off easily, without too much bother. An example of low hanging fruit is pressing the "off" button on the TV or PC Monitor rather than leaving it on standby. It's easy… Continue

We're on the hunt for businesses in the Stirling area to take part in our carbon challenge over the next few months.

 

Businesses taking part will receive one-to-one support to really focus their carbon reduction energy on monthly "themes" (e.g. energy, waste, heating, lighting…

Continue

The Carbon Trust (who work with closely with our Low Carbon Alliance), have produced a neat slide show to highlight how businesses are absolutely vital to emissions reduction in the UK.

 

Click the image below to see the slide show on the Carbon Trust website.

It's only 5 slides, yet it demonstrates nicely the scale of the challenge and the need to ensure both businesses and the…

Continue

I have written about David MacKay's work before [update: David is now Chief Scientific Adviser to Department for Environment and Climate Change (DECC) - so there!], when I highlighted his experiment involving a power meter and mobile phone chargers. This showed how very small the power…

Continue

As has been reported by many news outlets, the world emitted more carbon in 2010 than ever before.

 

 

A whopping, if not mind-bendingly huge 30.6 billion tonnes of…

Continue

No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as a manor of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for…

Continue