MOORCROFTS AND THE ENVIRONMENT 

MOORCROFTS “CARBON NEUTRAL” FROM 2007

There has been a lot of debate in the press about going carbon neutral, and quite a few large businesses have gone carbon neutral using the route of paying for tree planting or paying for energy reduction technology in the third world.  There is controversy about whether these steps actually reduce carbon, and it seems to us that the unspoken assumption is that tree planting will reduce carbon over the life cycle of a tree, so the full impact of the carbon off-setting by tree planting will take some time to come through.  However, its not a perfect world, and we feel that carbon off-setting by tree planting is a valuable step for a small business like us to take.  We also like the idea of helping to create woods.

So we have looked at four websites that calculate carbon emissions, and put in the best data we can about what we do.  Each of the websites has given us a slightly different answer, but all within a fairly narrow range.  So we have taken the average of the four carbon footprints.  We have then made a donation to the Woodland Trust for tree planting of the amount that the Woodland Trust recommends to cover this carbon footprint for a year.  To do this “officially” via the Woodland Trust (in other words to get a certificate from them that we are “carbon neutral”) requires a “green audit”, and we believe this is too much bureaucracy for a small service industry company like us.  So we made a donation to the Woodland Trust, and have continued to do so each year.

MOORCROFTS REVIEWS ITS ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

We have also reviewed what we do to see whether we can reduce our impact on the environment.

Our aim is to minimise the impact of Moorcrofts on the environment.  As a services company, there is a limited amount we can do to help, but here’s what we do.

• When replacing electrical equipment, we always look for the most environmentally and energy efficient products we can.
• We aim to minimise energy usage by not unnecessarily using air-conditioning, lighting or heating.

We do use a lot of paper, as we tend to print out lots of long documents, emails and letters. We looked into buying recycled paper, but the advice we received from our paper suppliers was that recycled paper when used in bulk in the way that we use it would create dust that would damage our printers, so we have concluded that we need to stick with what we have for now.  However, all the paper we use comes from a renewable source.  We try to avoid printing out surplus copies of documents, print on both sides of the paper where possible and we shred all waste paper that has any client information on it.  We would like to recycle the shredded paper and the junk mail we receive, but unfortunately Wycombe District Council does not collect recycling materials such as paper and cardboard from businesses in our area.  So at present, this just goes into the tip.  As and when there is a collection service, we will participate.

We are tenants of the building we occupy.  So issues such as insulation, wind turbines, solar panels and so on are beyond our control. 

We encourage home working as often it helps to be away from the office to do some particularly difficult drafting!  Home working has obvious environmental benefits in reducing travel.