Are big businesses getting it?

After years of wondering what we have to do to encourage our clients and big business generally to start investing to save carbon, energy and money, I was really heartened by a presentation this week by Nigel Graham of Whitbreads; I was sharing a platform with him at a Construction Products Association http://www.constructionproducts.org.uk/ networking event at BIS. Whitbread no longer make beer but are expanding their hotel chain (Premier Inn), their coffee bars (Costa) and other brands.

Nigel explained that they had been driven to invest by the rising cost of energy, landfill and the Carbon Reduction Commitment. Following footprinting work, they invested £3m in LEDs and were delighted that it paid for itself in 18 months - easy! They then footprinted a hotel bed and discovered that 87% of the carbon was in the materials and 57% of that was in the cotton sheet; so now they are tying to reduce their dependency, especially as the price of cotton has tripled in the last three years.

In the same session Rob Lambe of Willmott Dixon explained how WDC were aiming for zero waste from sites and carbon neutrality by 2012! He very rightly complained that the Treasury Green Book promoted While Life Value but that no one in the public sector does it!

There is no doubt that the Treasury is the biggest block to carbon and energy reduction, surrounded as they are by big capital and the utility companies; we must all take every opportunity to talk about this to politicians, to the press and to our public sector clients and act in a politically relevant way.