Business in the Community leads corporate greening in the North East

Our ethos as an organisation is to promote leadership in responsible business. Carbon management is at the heart of any business commitment to sustainable development.

CarbonNeutral Newcastle has calculated the carbon footprint of Business in the Community’s North East office at 38 tonnes CO2, largely from staff travel and energy use.  As a result, the office is undertaking an energy efficiency programme and implementing a green travel plan. 

Unavoidable emissions are being offset through investment in local insulation and renewable energy projects, making the North East the first Business in the Community office in the country to go CarbonNeutral.

With the recent publication of the synthesis report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the urgency of taking action has never been greater.  In the North East, temperature rises are predicted to bring greater flooding, storms and a halving of snowfall in winter. To curb global warming to within safe levels, the world's greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced dramatically by 2050.

Karen Wilkinson-Bell, Regional Director for the North East, said, “Our ethos as an organisation is to promote leadership in responsible business. Carbon management is at the heart of any business commitment to sustainable development. We are the first Business in the Community office to go CarbonNeutral and promote this best practice to our members, which is a good example of how positive green thinking can help the region’s economy.”

Business in the Community ran a successful business seminar with CarbonNeutral Newcastle on carbon leadership at Durham Business School on 1 November 2007. This was a follow-up event to The Prince of Wales’s May Day Business Summit on Climate Change which took place on 1 May 2007.