To fly or not to fly?

Well, from an environmental perspective, Not to Fly obviously!

But if you've only got limited holiday time it's so much quicker to get anywhere! We were talking about how to encourage staff to take the train or car-share on their climbing holidays whenever possible and this was one of the biggest concerns (the other being price of course). Whilst we're not really in a position to offer cash for holidays (and if you book a train in advance it can be cheaper and much more convenient) we decided that any staff member who approached the management team about going on holiday and taking a slower, less carbon intensive route could be granted a couple of extra days holiday for travel.

Great for me becasue I hate flying and not just for environmental reasons!

the cost of consuming

We ran out of our lovely orange pens this month. We were just going to order a load more but started to wonder if going through around 2000 plastic pens every 6 months really was in fitting with our EP.

We wanted to keep having them though as they're so useful and people seem to really like them, so we found some cardboard versions. There are so many "eco" pens out there made from, amonst other things: recycled CD cases, recycled car tyres, recycled money (I really liked this one) and corn starch. We decided on the carboard ones in the end as they can easily be recycled themselves (and to be honest were a bit cheaper than some others).

We also had to order some new staff clothing this month and, as we have come to do for most new purchases, wondered where the clothing came from, who made it and was it made with consideration for the environment? Our suppliers, Continental Clothing do an "earth positive" range which is 100% organic and 90% lower CO2 so we thought we'd give that a go.