Wednesday the 5th of June marks World Environment Day; here at Service Care Solutions we are in our 4th year as a carbon positive company. This means that each year we have offset 150% of the carbon we have created.
In this time, we have also become way more efficient; we have replaced all of our old single glazed wooden framed windows for double glazed metal framed ones, all of our lights are efficient LEDs with motion sensors so they switch off automatically and we have installed solar panels on our roof (see below for an image of our actual panels).
Similarly, I am personally looking to change from my heating oil based central heating system at home (we don’t have access to mains gas) to a more sustainable air source heat pump system.
Both of these things got me to thinking about WHY we as a nation are becoming more concerned about our environment and our own impact on it and it reminded me of a podcast which I listened to with Elon Musk (the American businessman responsible for Tesla and Space X). When he was talking about his flagship car, the Model S, he made a point about how most people were concerned about the environment but that this isn’t enough to necessarily make them buy more eco-friendly products.
His point (I believe) was that the quickest way to achieve this was to develop products which are eco-friendly and are BETTER than their non-eco-friendly competitors, this is when a difference will be made.
Take his Tesla cars for example, some of them accelerate as fast or faster than a majority of top super or even hyper cars. They have the most advanced self-driving functions. They have playful driving modes (such as star wars hyperspace mode) and some of them will even do a dance for you (seriously if you haven’t seen it have a look on YouTube).
I have to say that I agree with him, when I look at the reasons for me changing my heating system for example. If I am completely honest it isn’t based on the fact that it burns a fossil fuel and emits Co2 into the atmosphere. It is because I have seen the price of heating oil go up over the past few years and I am worried about that in the future. That coupled with that fact that there are eco-friendly options out there which you can get funding for and which will protect me from fossil fuel increases in the future makes it an attractive prospect for me morally but more importantly financially! I have to be honest and say that I wouldn’t even be considering it if it wasn’t for that.
The same could be said for the changes which Service Care Solutions have made to the building; these just made good sense.
And I wager that this is the case for the majority of people in this country. Yes, we are concerned about the environment, but will little old me running my oil boiler for a few hours a day make that much of a difference?! If companies and the government are serious about making a difference it needs to be based on something better, not on good will alone.
World Environment Day this year is focused on air pollution and maybe the notion I have described above is something which could be used to tackle this problem. Maybe it is as simple as providing something better…you could just make it cheaper, that would make it better? Or maybe you could provide more of it so it is more convenient; or maybe we could make it faster (Mr Musk is apparently working on this one as well in the US digging tunnels for superfast trains which travel in vacuums meaning they can travel at incredible speed for very little power input). Anyway, I am not a politician or an economist or even an environmentalist so I don’t know the intricacies of it all. The only thing I know is that as humans we are always looking for something better (probably why we have been pretty successful), so if lessening our impact on the environment is a target for us all, we need things which enhance our life, not compromise it. That way, everyone is on board with the environment.
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