Environmental strategy – Include

October 2020

Purpose

Include’s environmental strategy sets guidelines for the participating research institutions and those delivering services to the FME-centre so as to ensure that the activities are carried out in the most environmentally friendly way possible. ‘’Environmental friendliness’ refers to reduction in climate gas emissions as well as efforts to reduce degradation of local environments, natural resources and biodiversity.

Objectives

  • To ensure that the centre’s own practices rapidly adopt and promote best practice environmental solutions as appropriate.
  • To increase awareness among participants in Include, their host institutions and the wider community about environmentally friendly practices. 

Background

Include’s overall objective is to contribute with knowledge on how to realise a low carbon society (in a socially inclusive manner). Following this objective, we saw a need to develop guidelines in terms of enhancing Include’s own practices in a climate - and environmentally friendly way. Although we will, when feasible (e.g. travels) initiate certain measures for systematically estimating Include’s footprints/emissions, we do not aim to calculate exact environmental impacts for all our activities. Among other sources, we have used CICERO’s guidelines for reducing climate footprints for business travels and their guidelines on food servings at meetings/seminars/conferences as inspiration for developing these guidelines.

We know from the literature on carbon accounting that four domains comprise the main consumption-based carbon emission sources (Steen-Olsen et al. 2016):  transport, housing, food and recreation. In the case of research activities in Include, travels and food consumption are two domains with a high environmental impact that potentially may be reduced. Therefore, the strategy puts emphasis on these two categories. While travel primarily relates to emissions, the realm of food also concerns other kinds of environmental impacts (e.g. negative effects of pesticides and fertilizers).

Guidelines for travel

Types of work-related travels

  1. Meetings organised by Include: When organising meetings/seminars or other kinds of events, we will actively encourage long-distance participants to join the events through video-/teleconferences and also aim at arranging events at easily reachable locations.
  2. Meetings organised by others: When we participate in meetings/events organised by others, we should have Include’s Code of Conduct for travel defined below in mind. Further, we should try to avoid sending several researchers to the same event. When purposeful, the person representing Include could also get inputs and present work from colleagues who are not attending the meeting.
  3. Travels in connection with conducting research: When we travel in connection to research, e.g. field work, we should have the Include’s Code of Conduct for travel in mind.

Include’s Code of Conduct for travel

Include researchers and administrative staff should look for the most environmentally friendly way of travelling, and additional costs incurred by this choice should be covered by the Include budget including costs for extra hotel nights and more expensive travel options. Checklist:

  1. Find alternatives to flying: Video-/teleconference and ground travel to be preferred.
  2. Actively decide against some work travels to reduce emissions.
  3. If work travel is needed, ground travel should be the first choice for travels within the North of Europe (including UK). If possible, ask the travel agency to calculate the emissions avoided by ground travel compared to air travel to document the impact of this choice.
  4. If flying is unavoidable, justify the travels. If possible, ask the travel agency to calculate the emissions to document the impact of this choice.
  5. Avoiding stop-over flights and choose companies with modern fleet (ICCT 2018).
  6. When reimbursing travel costs, submit Include’s travel report (online).

Guidelines for serving of food

Include’s code of conduct when ordering and serving food

  1. Select a sustainable menu that reflects the local and seasonal availability of food ingredients and includes vegetarian, vegan and organic options as appropriate.
  2. Reduce food waste by avoiding ordering too much food at events and consider organising events without serving food. In the case of left-overs offer these to other colleagues.

Other areas and further work with the guidelines

Include’s researchers and administrative staff should, when possible, look for the most environmentally friendly options when carrying out activities to use as few resources as possible (e.g. when printing, sending emails, deleting old emails etc.). We aim to be proactive in terms of identifying ways to minimise and monitor Include’s environmental impact, and adjust these guidelines accordingly.

References

  • ICCT (2018) Transatlantic airline fuel efficiency ranking, 2017
  • Steen-Olsen, K., R. Wood & E.G. Hertwich (2016). The Carbon Footprint of Norwegian Household Consumption 1999–2012, Journal of Industrial Ecology, 20, 582–592, doi: 10.1111/jiec.12405
  • Tuck, S. L., Winqvist, C., Mota, F., Ahnström, J., Turnbull, L. A., & Bengtsson, J. (2014). Land‐use intensity and the effects of organic farming on biodiversity: a hierarchical meta‐analysis. Journal of applied ecology, 51(3), 746-755.
Publisert 25. okt. 2022 16:10 - Sist endret 25. okt. 2022 16:10