City firm is going green

from the Evening News 12/01/08

Workers at a city-based car dealership are making their rivals green with envy after pledging to become the county's most environmentally friendly firm.

Bussey's, whose head office is in Whiffler Road, has considerably reduced its carbon footprint over the past 12 month after cottoning on to the importance of being greener.

And today its efforts were praised by bosses at CRed, the UEA-based carbon reduction programme, who urged other firms in the city to do the same.

The company's first step in reducing its carbon footprint was to introduce heating controls installed at its head office, which it says has drastically reduced the amount of oil it consumes.

Meanwhile, a £20,000 investment introduced new systems throughout the group, such as lights that switch off when the doors are open.

And almost a year ago, the firm launched its biggest initiative in conjunction with Norfolk County Council, where for every car purchased the car dealership committed to planting a tree at woodland in North Burlingham.

The company is on course to hit its target of 2,500 trees in the first 12 months of the project, the equivalent of seven acres of woodland being made available to the local community.

Finance director, Terry Bolton, said: "We've done a lot of work to get where we are, and now we've all started coming up with ideas. "We're trying to think of new things we could be doing and we've looked at
extra things like recycling old Christmas cards and extra cycle racks so our staff would be encouraged to cycle to work."

In addition, Bussey's will be taking Ford batteries for recycling at all sites in Norfolk - except Whiffler Road - where general waste collection is shared between the management, Glazewing and City Care.
The company is also encouraging its customers to accept communication by email to reduce paper usage.

CRed liaison officer, Marcus Armes, said: "The important thing is to keep going with the initiatives and, by doing that, companies will also reduce their energy bills. With bills going up every day it makes sense to keep them down.

"The other thing, of course, is that if your staff are thinking low energy at work: they are more likely to go home and think low energy as well.

"The other thing we've found is you'll often get someone in a business who is
committed to energy reduction and then they leave, so the culture needs to be
embedded in the company itself."