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| Go green with BT? |
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| Thursday, 22 March 2007 | |
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BT’s new carbon calculator invites cynical derision as just another big corporate jumping on the ‘green’ gravy train. Yet perhaps the UK telco giant deserves some applause – a rare commodity in these parts – for its actions as well as its words.
“BT doesn’t need to point out that climate change is one of the biggest challenges that we face, but people often don’t realise that individually it is possible to take real, meaningful action on it. We believe that governments, organisations and individuals can all take steps to reduce the size of their carbon footprint, and we strongly encourage people to visit our site and see for themselves the difference they can make.” Who said that? None other than Donna Young, BT’s Head of Climate Change. She was commenting on the launch of BT’s new web-based carbon calculator (www.btplc.com/climatechange), which allows individuals and businesses to work out their carbon footprints. The instant cynical response to this is to question what business it is of BT’s to tell us how to act in the context of sustainability and the environment. This is a company that builds towering masts, strings wires between poles in most streets and is forever digging up the roads while its fleet of vans shuttles from place to place. If that’s not despoiling the environment, what is? A second cynical response asks just what BT is doing with the appointment of a ‘Head of Climate Change’? An additional cynical response is to point out that BT’s self-interest on green matters stems from the fact that if people travel less, they will use the services offered by the likes of BT that much more. The official term for this is ‘greenwash’. It would be like Union Carbide erecting wind farms in Bhopal as evidence of its responsible approach to the environment. Green is the colour The problem with cynicism is that it is often self-serving, politically motivated or just plain wrong. This often applies in the current debate on the environment. BT consumes a staggering 0.7% of the UK’s total electricity supply. In the last decade it has reduced its emissions since 1996 by 60%, against a post-Kyoto target of 25%. By 2010, BT’s annual reduction in consumption will be enough to power the cities of Cardiff and Liverpool combined: equivalent to 300,00 households. It’s also the equivalent annually of 143,000 cars driving around the planet. BT summarises its carbon-cutting policy on three measures: • reducing its own carbon footprint to reach an 80% reduction by 2016; • engaging with employees to help reduce their personal carbon footprints; • encouraging customers and suppliers and helping them to act. BT’s new carbon calculator is not unique and it is probably inferior to many that can be found on the Internet. But it would be wrong to dismiss its actions as greenwash. Cue the clapping. Jim Chalmers |
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