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A sustainable department
The Department for Children, Schools and Families is a central government department housed in five office buildings on four sites – London, Sheffield, Runcorn and Darlington – occupying around 90000 square metres of space.
Around 2600 people work for the Department and another 2000 are ‘hosted’ from other government departments.
With so many people and so much physical space, the Department has an opportunity to make a big difference to its environmental impact.
The Department is working towards sustainability in a number of ways:
Saving energy and resources
The Department is working with its energy supplier to source renewable energy and combined heat and power (CHP) electricity. A major refurbishment project at Sanctuary Buildings has incorporated energy efficient equipment and lighting, as well as water conservation measures, that will significantly reduce the Department’s carbon footprint.
Buying goods and services with sustainability in mind
A team of procurement advisors and specialist buyers consider sustainability issues when making decisions about ‘whole life’ costing and value for money in the goods and services the Department buys.
Wasting less
The Department is committed to reducing, reusing and recycling office waste.
There are already arrangements for recycling:
- toner cartridges
- fluorescent tubes and bulbs
- white paper
- cardboard
- batteries
- mobile phones
The Department was the first within government to start a computer recycling scheme. Equipment is reconditioned and made available to schools and charities.
Where possible, furniture is also reused by other sites within the Department, schools or charities.
In 2004/2005, 294 metric tonnes of waste was sorted and collected to be recycled or composted. In 2006/2007, this had increased to 1015 metric tonnes, plus a further 106 metric tonnes of waste was collected and used to generate energy.
Saving water
The Department has been a member of the Watermark scheme since August 2002. Watermark was established by the Office for Government Commerce (OGC) to help organisations cut their water consumption and costs.
Overall consumption has been reduced, but the Department is still working to make more reductions.
Travelling sustainably
The Department is getting rid of all old pool vehicles, instead using hire vehicles that are less than six months old and more environmentally friendly. Any future car schemes will only offer vehicles that are within the135g/km CO2 targets.
