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TEST & PROTECTMessage from Keith McNamara, Managing Director
Mamy Tylko Jedną Planetę – Zaopiekujmy Się Nią
We Only Have One Planet – Lets Look After It
Hello everyone,
Over the next few months, you will be hearing a lot in the media about Climate Change, as Glasgow is set to host something called COP26 in November. COP26 is a major global climate change conference, attended by World Leaders.
This will turn the spotlight (quite rightly in my opinion) on what we can all do to protect our planet from climate change. If we don’t, the damage to our future generations will be immense.
In Tayside Contracts, we have already done some pretty incredible things to reduce our environmental footprint. Examples include:-
- 95% of construction materials which we excavate are recycled into aggregates for reuse.
- Our new Tay Cuisine unit provides energy/environment benefits. For example, the unit uses 75,000 hours less energy for food production, as well as a reduction in fuel usage and carbon emissions by reducing the number of food runs, and increased use of smaller delivery vehicles.
- Our Street Lighting teams have installed over 9,000 LED lights which will save 2.5 million kWh of energy – equivalent to the power consumed from watching TV by the entire population of Tayside for one week.
- Our Reed Bed System to treat gully waste means we don’t have to landfill this type of waste.
- Our move to working from home for many of our employees (due to COVID restrictions) has resulted in a huge reduction in travel, and therefore carbon emissions.
- We are also increasing the number of electric vehicles we have in our vehicle fleet.
From what I’ve seen since I’ve joined, protecting our environment is a very important issue to a lot of people in Tayside Contracts.
It`s vital for us in Tayside Contracts that we all need to play our part in protecting the environment – because it is the right thing to do for our future generations, because it will save the organisation money, and because new laws will require us to make the changes – for example the sale of petrol/diesel vehicles will end by 2030 (just over 8 years away !).
Therefore, Tayside Contracts needs to be even more environmentally sustainable – and that’s why in our new Business Plan, we said we would develop a Climate Change Plan for the organisation.
However its not just the big things (like the examples above) that make the difference. It’s the small steps we can all take to ‘do a little, change a lot’. If more of us took these small steps - such as turning off electrical items, recycling our waste, and walking or taking public transport instead of the car - that would add up to huge reduction in carbon usage.
Perhaps, like me, you are not fully up to date on Climate Change, what it is about, and what we can do in our workplace and our home life to make a difference. Therefore, to share some information on this important issue, we have teamed up with Perth & Kinross Council, to offer an e-learning module – as something all of us can do to help tackle Climate Change. I have tried this module and found it to be interesting and informative, and I`d invite you to do the same.
I appreciate not everyone has access to a computer at work, and we are looking at alternative ways of sharing these important messages. However, if you can access a computer at work, please consider taking this module.
The module is available by clicking this link:
…and one more thing. As I mentioned earlier, we need to develop our Climate Change Plan for Tayside Contracts, and I’m looking for your help. I’m going to organise a meeting on climate change with an open invitation to anyone in Tayside Contracts with an interest in our environmental ambitions to come along to discuss what we have achieved so far, and what more we need to do to be proud of our environmental performance, and develop our Climate Change Plan.
If this is something you would be interested in attending, please let Ashleigh Robertson know (ashleigh.robertson@tayside-contracts.co.uk) We will get back to you with further details.
Thanks for your interest in Climate Change, and I hope we can work together to help us on our journey to become a zero carbon organisation, and ensure Tayside Contracts is a leading example of environmental performance.
Keith McNamara
Managing Director
Community benefit through the pursuit of excellence
Registered Office: Contracts House. 1 Soutar Street. Dundee, DD3 8SS. UK
Copyright 2021 Tayside Contracts. All rights reserved.
Copyright 2021 Tayside Contracts. All rights reserved.