Sustainable September: Week 3
- copenhageninterns
- Sep 17, 2018
- 2 min read
Week 3 - Reducing our carbon footprint
Monday 17th to Friday 21st of September 2018
Last week’s survey highlighted that there may not be enough bins in kitchens, particularly for cardboard, cans and food waste. The survey is still open, so please continue to share the problems you face with recycling in the building! We hope that the new bin designs have helped you to sort waste better in shared areas.
Week 3 - Reducing our Carbon footprint
The aim of this week is to reduce our carbon footprint. All of the action we are taking this month will contribute to reducing your carbon footprint, but here we highlight two main ways; reducing energy use and preventing unnecessary printing!
In one week in September last year, UN city printed 112 500 pages, totalling 45 boxes of paper! To give you an idea of how much paper this represents, head down to the foyer and check out our installation. And this is not even accounting for usage of ink, staples, or the amount of paper waste we produce in the process.
Tips for reducing printing:
Print only pages you are interested in reading
Print two pages of a document on one side of A4 to half the paper use
Use the commenting function of Microsoft Word when reviewing a draft document
The second objective of the week is to think about our energy use. A recent report by the Danish Technological Institute (DTI) showed that UN City was using significantly more energy than it was designed to. There’s a short video on the UN City intranet explaining the report - check it out if you haven’t already! Though part of the report highlights that the building could work more efficiently, it also shows that we, the occupants, could have less of an impact on energy use! For example, quite a lot of unnecessary energy goes into heating or cooling down certain offices more than others, which complicates the internal environment. The report recommends against changing the office temperature by more than 1 degree for example. Remember - you can always put a sweater on; small changes can have a big impact if the thousand of us all pitch in!
Reducing your individual carbon footprint
Calculate your personal carbon footprint.
Here are the top 5 most effective ways to reduce your individual carbon footprint:
Live car free
Take one less long-haul flight per year
Buy green energy
Switch to an electric car
Eat a plant-based diet
Fighting climate fatigue
Trying to reduce your carbon footprint on an individual level after time can feel like swimming against a tsunami - it is tempting to give up altogether. Or maybe you feel you have done all you can to reduce your climate footprint, but not sure where to turn next?
The impact of individual action is multiplied when communities start to rally together - hence Sustainable September! If you’ve got climate fatigue, being inspired by other people fighting the same battles might make the difference. Here are some organizations in Denmark where you can get involved in taking climate action:
Comments