25 January 2012

Costain is taking further measures towards improving its environmental performance with the launch of a campaign encouraging staff to choose ‘greener’ ways of getting to and from work.

The Costain Cares initiative takes account of the impact that the Company’s activities may have both locally and globally. With climate change generally agreed to be an effect of human activity, a responsible organisation such as Costain has to seek ways of reducing its impact on the environment by becoming more sustainable. This, in turn, plays a small part in helping the UK reach its challenging carbon reduction targets.

Having developed and launched its Climate Change Strategy in 2010, the Company set a long-term target to reduce its measured emissions by 35% by 2020, compared to its 2008 baseline.

Over the next 12 months a series of initiatives is being launched to enable employees to help Costain reach this ambitious target.

The first of these involves Sustainable Transport. This is defined as a form of transport that has either no or low impact on the environment. With the Government having recently announced that transport emissions accounted for 25% of all UK emissions in 2010, it is an obvious area in which to try to be as economical as possible. For this reason Costain is encouraging staff and visitors to make more sustainable transport choices.

Initially, a travel options document has been added to the ‘Directions to Costain House’ sheet that is distributed to visitors to help them plan their journey.

For Maidenhead employees, a poster and information campaign is also being launched to inform staff of the benefits of sustainable transport both for themselves and the environment.

The poster has been produced for display on all notice boards in HQ. Additionally, a more detailed ‘Travel Guide’ document has been produced to provide staff with further information on the transport routes and options available to them.

“Costain has business-wide targets and this will play a part in achieving that,” said Group Environmental Manager, Amy Shuffleton. “It’s a Maidenhead-based scheme but the idea is to extend it to other permanent offices and major sites.

“Over coming months in Maidenhead we will also be running an on-line travel survey to establish the current trends in methods of travelling to work, and to enable us to monitor and report on any changes.  It is also a great way for us to get feedback and any other ideas from staff.”

 

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