Draft Business Waste Strategy PDF - london.gov.uk - Greater ...

Making waste work in London The Mayor’s Draft Business Waste Management Strategy Mayor of London 75
example, a survey showed that British office workers print, on average, 22
pages each day and a quarter said they do not give much thought to printing
documents with eight per cent printing emails before they have read them 167 .
4.11 There are a number of initiatives coordinated by the LDA that provide
information and advice to businesses to help them manage their resources
more productively. Businesses should utilise this support as they
implement the proposals in this strategy.
4.12 For example, Envirowise offers one-to-one practical support and aims to
ensure that solutions are driven by the specific needs of individual firms.
This assistance enables companies to increase their profitability by making
more productive use of materials in order to reduce their economic costs
and environmental impact. Savings of around £1,000 per employee are
typically made through resource productivity programmes 168 and the
average payback periods for such initiatives are measured in months,
rather than years. Since 1994, Envirowise has helped UK industry save
more than £1 billion 169 .
Case study 17 - Waste prevention initiatives at City Hall
Environment Champions, developed and delivered by Global Action Plan,
was run at City Hall between May 2005 and March 2006 and continues to
be delivered by an internal team. The project aimed to reduce the level of
waste produced by the GLA and to raise staff awareness of environmental
sustainability. Through two audits the team was able to measure progress
against a challenging target that was set at the start of the project, which
was to achieve a ten per cent reduction in waste to landfill. Through
initiatives such as reducing the use of plastic cups (achieving a reduction
of 27 per cent or 3,000 cups a month) this target was exceeded and
waste reduced by 30 per cent. Purchasing of white copier paper also went
down by three per cent, saving the equivalent of 16 trees per year, and
£522 in costs each year. As a result of this project, staff now use just 43
sheets of paper each per day. Work continues, however, to support staff
to exceed the benchmark of 40 sheets of paper per day.
Source: Global Action Plan
Case study 18 - HSBC launches new programme to cut paper use
HSBC customers who have registered for Personal Internet Banking can
elect to stop receiving their monthly current account, quarterly savings
account and twice-yearly mortgage account statements. The campaign,
which aims to cut down on paper use has reached a major milestone.
One million accounts have now opted to stop receiving statements,