Eco-gesture & action plan for UIC carbon footprint reduction


UIC - Bilan carbone® 2018

Dear colleagues,

Following the greenhouse gas emissions assessment of UIC, all UIC Staff members are warmly invited to actively contribute to build our common CO2 reduction objective by completing the questionnaire below.

The purpose of this form is to collect your ideas, requests and needs to build collectively action plans to reduce UIC carbon footprint.
This questionnaire will also be very useful to learn more about UIC Staff working habits and to raise awareness about eco-gestures in the work place.

We would be grateful if you could fill in this questionnaire at your earliest convenience, ideally by 25 September 2019.

Personal information
What is your gender?
Which of the following best describes your designation?
Which age category do you belong to?

Optional

1. Environmental concerns
How concerned are you about the environment on a global level?
How far does your concern about the environment affect your daily decisions or purchases in your private life?
How far does your concern about the environment affect your daily decisions or purchases in your professional life?
2. Travelling habits
Do you use videoconferencing when you plan to attend a meeting
How often do you use videoconferencing compared to traditional meetings?
Do you think you could use videoconferencing more?
Do you think current videoconferencing facilities are convenient enough?
When travelling for UIC, do you consider the relevance of travelling?
When travelling for UIC, do you consider the environmental impact of your chosen modes of transport?
When organizing a meeting, do you consider the choice of locations enabling to reduce travel?

Videoconferencing instead of travelling helps reduce carbon footprint, costs, fatigue and save time.
– In France, over long distances, switching from air to rail makes it possible to divide emissions by 40.
– When travelling by plane, opting for economy instead of business class allows emissions to be divided by more than half (as business class seats are wider, fuel consumption per seat is higher).

The fig.1 below shows the GHG emissions generated by a single person travelling 1,000 km for different modes of transport according to their average occupancy rate.

3. Energy
Do you automatically switch off the lights when leaving a room (office, toilets etc.)?
Do you always turn off your computer when leaving the office?
Do you regularly delete old emails/spam or junk folder?

With some simple actions, one can easily achieve important savings on the electricity consumption on the long run:

– Plugging your office electronic devices (coffee machine, kettle…) into a multiple socket with a switch so that you can completely switch off the mains supply instead of leaving them in standby mode. The consumption of electronic devices either switched off (i.e. still connected to mains supply) or in standby mode represents about 15% of the total consumption of the device..

– Turning off unnecessary lighting during the day and systematically turn off lights as soon as you leave the room last.

– Optimizing email use and storage: a simple e-mail without attachments is equivalent to emitting approx 10 grams of CO2 into the atmosphere - which corresponds to the carbon footprint of a plastic bag.
Deleting your old emails and empty your spam or junk folder. When exchanging by email, also think about reducing the number of recipients and avoiding oversized attachments.

– Preferring stairs to elevators for short trips

1% reduction in consumption (electricity and heating) thanks to these eco-friendly gestures would prevent the emission of 115 kgCO2e on the basis of emissions assessed in this study of the UIC carbon footprint study.

4. Waste
Do you sort paper?
Do you sort plastic?
5. Restaurant services
What is your food preference?
In a typical week, how often do you eat meat at the company restaurant?
After requesting catering services for a meeting, is there any leftovers?
6. Please select three ideas you think are the most relevant to make UIC more environmentally friendly
Select three ideas
7. Could you please provide two other ideas you have to make UIC more environmentally friendly?

fig.1

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Thursday 5 September 2019