I always saw myself as someone who was very aware of the responsibility of living with consideration for my fellow man. I would have said I cared a lot for the environment, without giving it much thought. Then I watched Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” and a lot changed for me. Suddenly I realised I was sleepwalking through life unaware of impending disaster. It is easy to be a busy fool, fiddling while Rome burns or is it Los Angeles or the outskirts of Sydney. It was a huge wake up call for me.
Images started to come into my mind about global warming. I remembered when I climbed Kilimanjaro how small the glaciers looked versus the traditional image shown of the mountain. If you had asked me five years before whether the environment was important I would have said very much so. And yet there I was driving around in a Range Rover because it was safe for the kids!!
A Prius has replaced the Range Rover. Taxis have been dropped for an Oyster card. Everything at home that can be recycled is recycled. All those measures are not enough when your company is running 22 vans through London and the South-East five days a week.
At London Calling we tend not to do things by half. When we embrace an idea we go for it. By the end of next year we intend to have all our vans either LPG (Liquid Paraffin Gas) or electric. By the end of this year we will be three quarters of the way to achieving that target. We recycle all of the remaining print and we know exactly where it is going and what it will be next. We have become more efficient in distributing and displaying print as we are covering fewer miles as our routing of journeys becomes more and more sophisticated.
We are embracing sustainability throughout the company. We have a green committee that has representatives from each department. We had a sustainability audit with Global Action Plan and now are working towards a Government accreditation.
Sustainability has become a genuine focus and every step along the way to hitting our environmental policy objectives and carbon footprint targets is met with as much enthusiasm as hitting our sales and profitability target.
I believe that the sustainability issue is going to grow in importance over the next few years as we are all forced to wake up and be more aware. Whatever you read and whenever you turn on the news, climate change and sustainability is not far from the surface. Obama, as President, I believe creates a new chapter and new momentum to the progress and even the financial crisis has failed to push the issue off the agenda. With the 2012 Olympics approaching at a frightening speed the ‘One Planet” objectives increases the awareness of the change and places London as a centre of excellence for sustainability.
I recognise that this is not a quick fix but from now on a way of life. At London Calling we are all prepared to take responsibility and our staff show a heartening enthusiasm to embrace the challenge.
By 2012 we will have a fleet of LPG and electric vehicles. We will have reduced our energy consumption to a minimum level and may well have invested in ways of generating our own energy. We want to explore more and more ways of making a difference, exploring zero emission hydrogen fuel cells and ways of reducing our total energy consumption further. We owe a huge thank you to Dr Ben Todd at Arcola Theatre for pointing us in the right direction and providing added enthusiasm and motivation for us to go further. We will have established a best practice for our industry and put forward recommendations as to how others can follow. Sustainability is something to share with everyone.
I took my kids to get a haircut last month and while Charlie was being “done” Larry (7 years old) was given an apple to eat. Where do I put the core? He asked. In the kitchen he was told. He returned with the core still in his hand saying he couldn’t find the compost bin!!
That’s the future when it becomes an unquestionable habit for everyone to embrace. I believe as a company we can inspire our clients as well as our peers to concentrate on reducing the damage we are doing to the planet. Our sponsorship of JAM, the AMA quarterly publication, is helping us get our message over to our clients and we will continue to pursue these goals. Then and only then can we talk about sustainability as something real rather than just a pale aspiration?
Andrew Moir – Managing Director
