Royal Mail Group Employee Tree Planting Scheme 

Already, 130 employees from Royal Mail, Post Office Ltd and Parcelforce Worldwide have signed up to the newly launched scheme to give money directly from their wage packets to the Woodland Trust, which will enable the charity to plant and look after 2,500 trees in its 1,000 UK woods.

To find out how many trees the employees would have to plant to offset their annual carbon footprint and to get tips about how to reduce their emissions they used a new carbon calculator called ‘Ollie’.

This calculator, developed by Royal Mail, asks employees about their home energy usage, as well as car and air travel before estimating how many trees will need to be planted to help offset their carbon footprints.

This is the first time a company’s employees have ever been given the opportunity to offset their residual carbon emissions tax free through their wage packets to a charity which specialises in UK woodland creation.

Now that Royal Mail have launched the scheme internally, the company has gifted the carbon calculator to the Woodland Trust, which is challenging other businesses to follow Royal Mail’s example and offer their employees the opportunity to help offset their carbon footprints. Clare Allen, Head of Corporate Partnerships at the Woodland Trust, said: “The excellent start this scheme has had with Royal Mail shows its employees are eager to do their bit to help the environment and reduce their carbon emissions. The Woodland Trust would like to thank them for their support and Royal Mail for gifting this carbon calculator to the charity. We further would like to challenge other businesses to offer this carbon offsetting opportunity to their staff.

“Planting trees creates vital habitats for more species than any other, it also traps pollution, generates oxygen, stabilises soil and forms a stunning part of our landscape”.

And yet woods are scarce, with only 12% of the UK wooded, compared to 46% on average in Europe. While it will take decades for the trees to absorb and thus offset carbon emission created today, the fact that you get a multiple package of environmental benefits makes our offset product worth buying on many grounds. We are aware tree planting is not the solution to climate change. But we do believe it can play a role once people have reduced and continued to reduce their carbon footprints.”

The scheme is the brainchild of Dr Martin Blake, Head of Sustainability at Royal Mail Group, who sees it as a way employees can make a difference by reducing their carbon emissions.

He said: “With some 185,000 employees we have a great opportunity to raise awareness in our workplace and through our people and more widely into their homes and communities. This unique product provides our people with the opportunity to ethically and appropriately offset their residual carbon emissions in what is the final step in a process of reduction. What we’re doing is spreading the word about a sustainable environment, not just giving people a way to offset. This new scheme clearly demonstrates the relationship between the amount of carbon you’re creating, and what it costs to offset it. The result: people have an interest in reducing. We are particularly keen to partner the Woodland Trust because woodland creation is more than just trees, it’s about creating habitats for wildlife and green spaces for people which will, ultimately, be self-sustaining.”

Royal Mail staff are no strangers to giving to charity though their wage packets (Payroll Giving). Royal Mail was among the very first organisations to set up Payroll Giving in 1989 and its scheme is one of the largest in the UK . The calculator is being promoted directly in the workplace by representatives from Payroll Giving in Action, who help employees to do calculations and fill out pledge forms.

About 50,000 staff are currently signed up to Payroll Giving and during the last financial year gave more than £2.6 million to charitable causes.

21 January 2008

EU rethinks biofuels guidelines

Rising crop devastation and food shortages have forced a reassessment of the role of biofuels in the fight against global warming -  the BBC explains. Palm plantations are replacing the original forest in some areas Europe's environment chief has admitted that the EU did not foresee the problems raised by its policy to get 10% of Europe's road fuels from plants. By Roger Harrabin Environment Analyst, BBC News 14.01.08 Recent reports have warned of rising food prices and rainforest destruction from increased biofuel production. The EU has promised new guidelines to ensure that its target is not damaging. EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said it would be better to miss the target than achieve it by harming the poor or damaging the environment. Clampdown promised A couple of years ago biofuels looked like the perfect get-out-of-jail free card for car manufacturers under pressure to cut carbon emissions. Instead of just revolutionising car design they could reduce transport pollution overall if drivers used more fuel from plants which would have soaked up CO2 while they were growing. Fuel made from plants like corn are driving up food prices The EU leapt at the idea - and set its biofuels targets. Since then reports have warned that some biofuels barely cut emissions at all - and others can lead to rainforest destruction, drive up food prices, or prompt rich firms to drive poor people off their land to convert it to fuel crops. "We have seen that the environmental problems caused by biofuels and also the social problems are bigger than we thought they were. So we have to move very carefully," Mr Dimas told the BBC. "We have to have criteria for sustainability, including social and environmental issues, because there are some benefits from biofuels." He said the EU would introduce a certification scheme for biofuels and promised a clampdown on biodiesel from palm oil which is leading to forest destruction in Indonesia. Some analysts doubt that "sustainable" palm oil exists because any palm oil used for fuel simply swells the demand for the product oil on the global market which is mainly governed by food firms. US expansion Mr Dimas said it was vital for the EU's rules to prevent the loss of biodiversity which he described as the other great problem for the planet, along with climate change. On Monday, the Royal Society, the UK's academy of science, is publishing a major review of biofuels. It is expected to call on the EU to make sure its guidelines guarantee that all biofuels in Europe genuinely save carbon emissions. In the US the government has just passed a new energy bill mandating a major increase in fuel from corn, which is deemed by some analysts to be useless in combating rising carbon dioxide emissions. The bill also foresees a huge expansion in fuel from woody plants but the technology for this is not yet proven on a commercial scale.