Red letter day as Royal Mail joins 10:10

[Geezer]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... nvironment



Red letter day as Royal Mail joins 10:10 climate change campaign

• Biggest organisation so far to back emissions effort
• Customers and employees encouraged to join in

* Buzz up!
* Digg it

* John Crace
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 September 2009 19.05 BST
* Article history

Royal Mail has promised to improve route planning for vans and introduce double-decker delivery trucks. Photograph: Alamy

The Royal Mail has become the latest major business to sign up to 10:10, the national climate change campaign to reduce carbon emissions in the UK by 10% in 2010. With 176,000 employees, it is the largest organisation to commit to 10:10 so far.

Royal Mail will not only seek to reduce its CO2 emissions in 2010 but will encourage its staff and business customers to do the same. Royal Mail has already reduced its operational emissions by more than 5% over the past three to four years.

In the next 12 months Royal Mail intends to: roll out more double-decker delivery trucks, which can carry more items per vehicle; improve route planning to reduce the total distance travelled; encourage its staff to reduce their emissions at home as well as at work; and offer cost savings to business customers that commit to only sending mail using sustainable paper and fully recyclable packaging.

"Royal Mail believes 10:10 is a great initiative and one that we're proud to be part of," said chief executive, Adam Crozier. "We know we can do much more for the future, both by driving down Royal Mail's own carbon usage throughout the country and by making it easy for companies who send a lot of mail to use the most environmentally friendly option."

Dr Martin Blake, head of sustainability for Royal Mail, believes the 10% target is an achievable target. "Our aspiration is to have reduced 50% of the carbon we emit in our operations by then [2015]," he said.

"Our process for doing this is avoid, reduce, replace and offset. So first we aim to avoid emitting carbon, for example, by eliminating unnecessary journeys. Reduction will see us trying to cut the amount of fossil fuel we use. Replacement will see the residual fuel or energy we use replaced with low or zero carbon equivalents. And finally, we'll offset."

Franny Armstrong, who leads 10:10 and directed this year's eco-documentary The Age of Stupid, welcomed the Royal Mail's initiative. "We're thrilled to have an iconic organisation like the Royal Mail sign up to 10:10," she said. "With such a huge number of staff, sites and vehicles, the company has the capacity to make significant emissions reduction as well as getting the 10:10 message out to a large number of customers and staff."

The 10:10 campaign, which hopes to replicate the grassroots success of 2005's Make Poverty History campaign, is supported by the Guardian. In the week since launch it has attracted 14,000 members of the public, 550 companies, 150 schools and 250 other organisations such as hospitals, police forces and charities.

Gordon Brown and the entire government and shadow cabinets have personally signed up, as have companies such as the online supermarket Ocado, city law firm Slaughter and May, energy companies British Gas and E.ON, and celebrities including Stella McCartney, Delia Smith, Ian McEwan, Sara Cox and Colin Firth.

In a letter to the Guardian tomorrow the NHS – Europe's largest employer and largest public sector emitter of CO2 – is urged to sign up to 10:10 by 10 NHS trusts that have already joined. They argue that cost savings from energy efficiency will be crucial as pressure rises on budgets and that staff morale could be boosted. Also today, a report concludes that the NHS will have to play a leading role in the response to climate change if it is to provide the best quality healthcare in the future.

David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS, said: "The NHS is determined to provide the best healthcare in a sustainable way which reduces our carbon footprint. We are sending Fit for the Future [the report] to every NHS organisation, to help us turn our commitment to delivering sustainable healthcare into real action."

[DGP1]

But we're going to ignore those posties using their cars and we're going to do away with bikes and switch instead to vans

[POSTMAN]

The bull s**t just gets worse

[ade@cambs]

If it all goes pear shaped we can guess who will get the blame.

[BELIAL]

Maybe it's just me, but how exactly does putting another 11,500 new sources of pollution on the road fit in with this spanking new green commitment ?

Hang on ,think I've got it . If badger and hedgehog fart is a major source of methane production then the increased volume of road kill may well offset the greenhouse gas production of the new vans.
But what about the lead ,cyanide ,cadmium and carcinogenic particulates? Back in a mo ,just off to check the bad stuff given off by butterflies and midges,it may hold the key.

Eat your heart out Orwell, never in your wildest flight of fantasy

[DGP1]

Maybe it's just me, but how exactly does putting another 11,500 new sources of pollution on the road fit in with this spanking new green commitment ?

Hang on ,think I've got it . If badger and hedgehog fart is a major source of methane production then the increased volume of road kill may well offset the greenhouse gas production of the new vans.
But what about the lead ,cyanide ,cadmium and carcinogenic particulates? Back in a mo ,just off to check the bad stuff given off by butterflies and midges,it may hold the key.

Eat your heart out Orwell, never in your wildest flight of fantasy

I really like your style, it's nice to be amongst the great cynics of RM