A decision was made at Head Office that a switch off campaign sounded like a good idea, so we (the Carbon Reduction steering committee) were told to organise one in our respective division. So, that will be easy then. After some debate as to what constituted a switch off campaign with a leading light thinking that it would involve lots of surveys and the appointment of green champions to look for energy saving opportunities, I finally got them to see sense and realise that it was just what it said on the tin: a campaign to raise awareness and get everyone switching things off when they were not in use. Back to the real world and the rush of the every day job kicked in and I did not really think about the switch off campaign.
A month later a reminder came out with a start date of 4th January. OK, so now I have a deadline, but still no guidance. So, what to do? I could email the Site Managers and tell them to organize a switch off campaign – that would work! I turned once more to my trusty friend Google and found a couple of bits of information, mainly from local councils who had jointly run just such a scheme and used these as the starting point for my ideas.
The first thing I did was make an action plan for the actual campaign which was to be over a two week period:
- Energy measurements to be taken at the same time each week for two weeks before, during and after the campaign.
- Site Managers to brief all of the staff about the campaign
- Site Managers to conduct a walk around the site during the campaign and provide positive and negative feedback to staff
- Staff to be encouraged to submit energy saving ideas
etc, etc. The action plan was emailed out to the Site Managers a couple of weeks before the start to give them a little advance warning. I have found that each of the seven sites we have is very different in size and culture, and so, one size does not necessarily fit all, so the Site Managers were the best people to decide how to get local buy-in.
Next on my list was to create some advertising material, something that would remind staff about the campaign and why they should be turning things off. So, back to Mr Google for some more helpful hints and tips, followed by a trip to an online stock photo site for some appropriate pictures (yes, I know that one of my other passions is photography, but I was in a hurry and did not have the appropriate props). A couple of late nights later and I had a series of posters for display at the sites detailing environmental facts and energy saving tips. You can view them here:
If you would like to use them please feel free to download – just let me know – it is always interesting to see where others are in their quest for energy efficiency as well as being good for the ego.
OK, so now I needed a bribe for the energy saving ideas bit. I settled on the promise of a tree planted in the name of the person with the best idea or a box of chocolates – should appeal to a lot of people I thought.
The campaign ran with mixed success, I will outline the reasons for this, along with the results, in my next post.