Article Two - Landlord Zone Feb 2010
A Burning Question. "How Green is my Company?"
Worried about the environment?
Want to do your bit to arrest global warming? Feel that you or your company are not doing enough to cut back on energy usage? Well now there is an easy way to do something about it and it will save you money too. Get online. And use an internet secretary! The simple act of using a typist who works from home could reduce your carbon footprint by as much as 3 tonnes of CO2 a year. A quick calculation on one of the carbon websites (www.carbonfootprint.com) shows that if a typist commutes in a car to work with a round trip of, say 10 miles, then they will easily account for this amount annually. That does not include the additional office lighting, heating and other associated energy costs that accrue with having an employee sitting at a desk all day, which might add another one to two tonnes to the total. More and more companies are now realising that it makes good ethical as well as business sense to use home-workers. Outsourcing is booming on the back of this green revolution. A plethora of internet companies have sprung up which provide a wide range of business services, from accounts to typing. "We have seen a big pick-up in interest for our services over the last 12 months and a major factor has been a desire in companies to be more green," says Richard Phillips of OutSec, a UK-based online secretarial support service. It seems somehow old-fashioned to get in a tin box sitting on four bits of rubber and burn some of the world's precious natural resources going to work when work can now come to you. Evidence shows that in the 21st Century, with superfast broadband internet, multi-function mobile phones and powerful home computers, the whole world is just a click away. The development of the world-wide-web might just be the one thing that changes the mindset of a generation and frees them forever from the tyranny of commuting. Of course it does help that there are normally substantial savings in a financial sense to be made when outsourcing is chosen, but the employer can still reap some kudos from helping to save the planet at the same time.