We began cutting our carbon emissions in 2008, and started by hiring a consultant to show us the ropes. We decided to join 10:10 a couple of years later to show our commitment.

Unfortunately, protecting the environment isn’t really much of a concern in Kuwait. Being an oil-rich country, energy prices are low and consumption is high.  People don’t think about (and often don’t even know about)  things like climate change,  and because the financial rewards of saving energy energy are much smaller than elsewhere, some people questioned why we were even bothering.

We were pretty amazed to see just how much these small behavioural changes reduced our collective carbon footprint.

We committed to carbon cutting out of concern for the environment, so obviously we weren’t put off by the lack of a financial payback. Convincing those around us that there was a need for change, that the prosperity of the planet might depend on it, was the first hurdle we had to overcome.

Educating our staff

Educating all our staff about sustainable office management was vital to our success. This involved communicating with everybody who worked at the British Council, from the people in the main office to the cleaning and security staff. We used every available opportunity to promote our environmental ambitions; we sent out continuous email reminders, we gave presentations at staff meetings and we even organised an away day which focused on environmental issues. Our consultant even came along as the guest speaker.

We focused on encouraging the team to do the simple things right; small measures like switching off lights, air conditioning units and other office equipment when they were not in use formed the basis of our environmental action.  And we were pretty amazed to see just how much these small behavioural changes reduced our collective carbon footprint.

Flying less

As well as getting into good habits around the office, we also reduced our reliance on air travel – a huge contributor to greenhouse gases.  We cut a lot of long and short haul flights and this obviously had a massive impact on our annual emissions.

In total we were able to cut our emissions by a whopping 23% in a single year – an amazing achievement in such an oil-dependent country!

Needless to say, our success doesn’t mean we’ll be resting on our laurels. We are determined to go further, and we already have a few ideas on what we’ll do in the future. We are allocating a larger proportion of our budget to our staff campaigns and we’ll encourage more team members to join the Green Team.  We are also going to embrace the digital age as wholeheartedly as possible in order to reduce paper waste in the office.

We’re also keen to spread the word to people outside the office as well – if we get this right it could be a big step on the road to environmental awareness over here.

For more info on the carbon cutting measures featured in this blog check out our resources page and the specific sections on:

•  Travel
•  Staff engagement 
•  Appliances