Government & Public Sector Journal

Public Sector Green Options

There is a thought that ‘green’ does not mean ‘lean’. With the focus today on cost-cutting many departments and organisations within the public sector are sidelining environmental initiatives in favour of ‘cheap’ alternatives – despite still caring about the core issues.

In reality, green can be lean. Following are a number of easy-to-implement process and policy changes that will immediately help you eliminate waste, reduce carbon footprint and simultaneously cut costs.

1.Reduce energy waste
A single PC left on 24 hours a day will cost £50* (at 6p pkw) a year, yet the average PC is in use for just eight hours a day, resulting in 681,333 watts of wasted electricity, equating to £1,070 a year, based on an office with 10 PCs.

When purchasing new equipment consider a low energy, reduced footprint model made from recycled and / or recyclable components
Turn heating down and close windows. By turning heating down by just one degree, and keeping windows closed in air conditioned rooms, you can immediately save hundreds of Fix all dripping taps. A single dripping tap can waste 500,000 litres of water a year costing business approximately £400*
Turn off unneeded lights and fans
Turn off non-critical medical and office equipment at night
Replace traditional light bulbs with low energy bulbs
Set power saving options on all equipment
Limit the time any fridge door is left open
Don’t over fill the kettle!

2. Swap office equipment and time-intensive administrative tasks for online or outsourced business services
Most administrative processes {in a school / council / library etc} are now PC-based so there’s little need for a {school / council / library etc} to maintain consumables or energy-hungry fax machines, colour printers and binding machines.

Replace fax machines with subscription or pay-per-use online fax services (SaaS), which send faxes as PDFs from PC to fax or fax to PC. This also provides a far more secure means of sending sensitive information due to password protection to the mail boxes
Many equipment suppliers now offer discounts for web-based accounts. Not only will you get better rates, you’ll save paper, as well as the cost and time needed to request cheques and administer postage

3. Replace routine letters and public information collateral with emails and web pages
An increasing number of {residents / visitors / customers etc} have access to the internet and email services. Take advantage and offer them the option to receive information updates electronically. A surprising number will prefer this to post

5. Introduce green incentives into the {school / council / library etc} daily routine
Introduce car share and walk-to-work incentives for staff and for patients if appropriate. If possible, offer season ticket loans to employees to encourage the use of public transport
Encourage recycling of all plastics, metals, paper, card and food stuffs by providing labelled bins
Centralise purchasing to enable bulk buying of recycled stationary, paper and toilet rolls
Consider shopping for office supplies at supermarkets. These are competitive; have promotions and some offer reward points on green and Fair Trade items
Forgo paper cups for reusable beakers and mugs

As you can see, becoming more environmentally-friendly doesn’t have to cost your {school / council / library etc}, or conversely, the earth.

Steve Adams is Vice President of Marketing for Protus (www.protus.com), provider of the highest quality Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) communication tools for SMEs including the award-winning MyFax, the fastest growing Internet fax service.

Steve can be reached at sadams@protus.com.

Sussex Health Informatics Service

Introduction

The Observer Suite from Network Instruments was implemented to provide visibility across the network.

The Challenge
Sussex HIS needed to upgrade its network to support a robust image archiving system and to replace the existing WAN with a newer, more resilient one.

The project started over 3 years ago, and Sussex estimates it will be completed two years from now at a total cost reaching £15m.

To justify investment Sussex HIS required complete visibility so it can troubleshoot future rollouts, as well as guarantee the delivery of sensitive, mission critical data to organisations across Sussex Health Authority.

The Solution
Mark Walker and Bruce Wright, two consultants at Sussex HIS were looking to build a solution that could implement and troubleshoot wired and wireless networks, VPNs, dial-ins and intrusion protection systems.

They worked with PTC, a leading Network tools consultancy and solution supplier, to build a blueprint for the future. A number of competitive solutions were trialled, but Network Instruments proved to be the winner.

Karen Dodson, Managing Director, PTC explained; Network Instruments’ Observer is the best network monitoring and analysis tool there is. It was built from the bottom up to meet the variable needs of organisations. Its beauty is its ability to hang modules off the core solution to meet differing needs of departments or seasonal fluctuations for example. It makes life very easy.

Prior to working with PTC we took the objective decision to purchase a low-end product from a competitor. We trialled the solutions with our General Practitioners, but it soon became clear that it was unable to handle Gigabit traffic without drops, explained Mark Walker, Consultant, Sussex HIS.

The Observer Suite offered powerful application and expert analysis, MultiHop analysis, and SNMP device management as its primary analyser.

In addition to this Sussex HIS also deployed 15 Gigabit Advanced Probes across its network and a Gigabit Observer Suite System (GOSS) to provide portable, all-in-one field service solution.

Network Visibility
A high number of third party applications are hosted and run over the Sussex HIS WAN. Because these are not managed in-house it is vital that Sussex HIS has complete visibility to ensure they are no impacting negatively on network flow and to enable potential problem diagnosis to be performed.

Of key concern was a new digital image archival system which Sussex HIS was implementing to replace traditional X-ray machines. The picture-archiving vendor told the team they would need to invest in Gigabit WAN links to ensure performance. However, Observer was able to test the network and established that the existing 100MB links were sufficient.

“Analysis showed that the need for more Gigabit WAN links was only necessary on rare occasions,” Walker explained. “Observer has given us immediate ROI by proving we don’t need to go and invest in these huge links.

In addition, Observer’s MultiHop Analysis tracks conversations through multiple segments, hops and routes, which allows the team to determine faults occurring on the applications and networks of the various organisations that make up Sussex Health Authority.

“With MultiHop Analysis, we can track all the way to the data path. This is invaluable to us because we are able to trace application and network faults,” Wright explained. “It enables us to easily identify where the problem is, or who the problem is with. On many occasions it has allowed us to granularly identify exactly what a problem is with a specific supplier. This saves a lot of time and money because we’re able to save on consultancy fees.”

The Business Case
Wright and Walker initially used Observer to help them understand their network environment and then to establish the exact reasons for performance issues.

They also used the integrated wireless and VoIP functions to build a business case for encrypting vulnerable areas on the Sussex HIS network. With Observer’s VoIP interface, it was easy to capture data and reconstruct phone calls to ensure future compliance and regulation.

“There were arguments against investing in encryption technologies,” Walker explained. “This was resolved quickly when we were able to prove to the customer and the supplier the security issues surrounding unencrypted voice and why the investment was needed.”

The Future
Sussex HIS continues to use Observer and is currently reviewing the Observer Reporting Server with a view to providing customer facing reports on security and performance. They have also convinced clients to purchase the Observer solution for end-to-end analysis.

Walker said implementing the Network Instruments solution was simple: “It is one of the easiest analyser technologies I have come across. It is literally plug and go – very little preliminary work, very intuitive analysis.”

B&Q awarded largest UK chain-of-custody certification

B&Q, the UK’s largest home improvement retailer is delighted to announce that it has gained a chain-of-custody certification for both Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes (PEFC), effective beginning of July 2008. The award has followed a strict audit of B&Q’s procurement and handling of certified wood products by the SmartWood programme of the Rainforest Alliance.

Chain-of-custody records the path wood products take from the forest to the final consumer. It includes all stages of manufacture, transportation and distribution and identifies the movement of the product from one link in the supply chain to the next. It is achieved by each link in the chain having a management system that can demonstrate how certified wood products are identified and controlled throughout the time that the product is in ownership. Therefore B&Q can now ensure that all their certified wood and paper products come from either proven, well-managed forests or recycled material according to the requirements of the FSC or PEFC schemes.

The awarding of the chain-ofcustody certification follows a long history of sustainability at B&Q, which began in the early nineties when the retailer became a founding member of the FSC through to January 2008 when B&Q announced that all of its kitchens are FSC certified. B&Q is proud to assure its customers that every purchase that bears the chainof- custody certification has been produced in such a way as to avoid wood from areas where the management practices damage ancient forests, harm wildlife or jeopardise the future of the people whose lives depend on the forest.

New environmental regulations in the construction industry make it ever more important for tradespeople to prove they are using sustainable materials for building projects and B&Q’s new chain-of-custody accreditation brings real benefits for its customers who can now point to B&Q’s FSC certification for their clients. In addition, local authorities are able to purchase from B&Q in the knowledge that many of the materials they need come from well-managed forest sources.

Diarmuid Walsh, Director of Building and Decorative for B&Q said: Sustainability has always been hugely important to us and we are delighted to see that our efforts to gain the certification have paid off. We are passionate about using responsibly sourced materials wherever possible and I am pleased we can now make the promise that the wood our customers purchase at B&Q has been sourced from wellmanaged forests.

Charles Thwaites, Executive Director, Forest Stewardship Council UK added: B&Q has been a valued supporter of FSC for many years, both through the promotion of FSCcertified timber products within their stores and for the financial contributions they have made to us as a charity. Achieving their chain-ofcustody certificate, which requires much hard work and dedication from a large number of staff, is yet more proof of the company’s commitment to sourcing timber from responsibly managed forests. I congratulate all those involved.

Rainforest Alliance SmartWood auditors visited numerous B&Q stores, questioned its employees’ timber-related knowledge and probed, first-hand, the resilience of its management systems. All PEFC and FSC materials sold under B&Q’s chain-of-custody will be identifiable and reportable and team members will be trained in chain-of-custody procedures in line with the requirements of the appropriate standards. Every time a customer buys a product that contains certified timber, B&Q’s unique chain-ofcustody certification code will appear on the receipt next to the item.

For more information visit www.trade.co.uk

GREEN TRAVEL TO WORK

The Government’s Green Travel Plan notes that commuter and business travel constitutes nearly 40 per cent of miles driven by cars in the UK every year. Aside from the millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide that this generates, contributing heavily to global warming, the negative impact of extensive car-use begins with the detriment caused to local communities and business.

As it stands, transport networks in the UK are under great strain from over-congestion. The cost of road maintenance is one thing, but the knock-on effects on business are extensive. They include increasing journey times significantly, causing costly delays and unreliability for businesses dependent on travel and transportation, and the need to provide and maintain adequate parking facilities to accommodate the high levels of cars in our towns and cities. This can start at a hefty £400 per parking space.

The Government’s Green Travel Plan outlines a number of solutions that can be adopted by organisations looking to promote corporate social responsibility and improve the local environment by encouraging changes in employee commuting habits. The report advises that cost-effective alternatives to single-occupancy car use Arguably, it is financial savings for employees (especially during these difficult economic times) that provide the best means of incentivising staff to change their commuting habits. Salary sacrifice schemes, whereby employees become eligible for tax and NI breaks when paying for selected travel benefits through deductions from their pay packet before tax each month, are one of the most popular and easily administered solutions.

Many organisations are now offering their employees the chance to claim major discounts when acquiring the use of bicycles, safety equipment and cycle clothing through a salary sacrifice scheme, for example. This government-backed initiative is helping to encourage more people to leave their cars at home in favour of using a bicycle as the healthier, cheaper and environmentally friendly option for getting to and from the workplace.

Brighton & Hove City Council, for one, launched a successful a cycle to work scheme, as Helen Marshall, travel plan officer for Brighton & Hove City Council explains: ‘We were keen to introduce a scheme which would encourage staff to travel using healthy and sustainable transport, in line with our Staff Travel Plan – the cycle to work scheme does just that and we are delighted to be able to offer this excellent benefit to our staff.’ Cycling, however, may not be for everyone.

For those that don’t fancy or are unable to take up cycling to work, public transport offers another alternative to cars. One of the targets of The Green Travel Plan is to increase bus journeys by 12 per cent by the year 2012 and there are salary sacrifice schemes available in line with this that generate savings for employees on the cost of annual travel passes for public transport.

Often the biggest employers in major towns and cities, local authorities throughout the UK have so far led the way in promoting the use of bus travel to their employees. Nottingham City Council was the first to offer staff savings on the cost of an annual bus pass through salary sacrifice initiative entitled Greentravel2work provided by employee benefits specialists P&MM. This scheme, as part of the council’s overall Work Perks benefits package, has received substantial take-up from staff and has won several prestigious HR awards. Throughout 2008, many more local authorities and now commercial employers too have also set up similar schemes that offer staff up to 41 per cent savings on the cost of an annual bus pass.

Angela Carr, employee travel coordinator at Oldham Council, commented: ‘As the largest employer in the area we consider it our responsibility to promote environmentally friendly policies to our staff, local companies and the community as a whole. We have had a Travel Plan for a number of years at the council, which includes many initiatives to encourage staff to use alternatives to the car. Greentravel2work is a fine example of one of these initiatives that will hopefully encourage even more employees to choose to travel to work by public transport.’

Southend-on-Sea Borough Council’s executive councillor for transport and planning, Councillor Anna Waite says: ‘The Greentravel2work scheme provides an affordable, environmentally friendly alternative for commuting. It shows our continued commitment to environmental issues such as reducing road congestion and pollution as well as raising community awareness.’

Offering employees assistance and incentives for finding alternative methods for travelling to and from the workplace can make a huge difference towards reducing car-use and achieving the Government’s recommended target; that a good travel plan should reduce the number of people driving to work by 15 per cent.

Salary sacrifice schemes such as cycle to work and Greentravel2work are prime examples that prove that making positive change towards more sustainable policies do not have to be costly at all. In fact, salary sacrifice schemes actually save both the employee and employer money through tax and NI breaks along with significantly enhancing the benefits package on offer to employees!

CLICK TO READ:

Recent Comments

Recent News

Archives

Sussex Health Informatics Service

Categories