Costs: Part 8 – Sustainability - Not costing the earth
Beena Nadeem
Monday, January 9, 2017
‘Going green’ isn’t just a moral decision – it can be a good business move when energy savings are taken into account, finds Beena Hammond
Picture Ysgol San Sior in Llandudno, Wales, a primary school and nursery which has solar panels on its roof and a data feed in the school hall showing how much energy they are producing (around 16,000KW per year – enough to light up the Eiffel Tower for a week). It also keeps bees and sells eggs commercially. While this scale of sustainable practice may seem beyond the reach of many small settings, ambitious programmes are definitely within the reach of those with the willpower to implement them. Crucially, they can still save providers money. For example, the Carbon Trust says changing lighting to energy-efficient LEDs and replacing an old boiler can shave 30 per cent off energy bills, with a typical payback of just three years.
‘[Energy is] always a really good starting point,’ says the Carbon Trust’s associate director Laura Timlin, though she warns that for larger nursery chains, this is something that should have already been identified in their audits.
Under the EU’s ESOS (Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme) Directive, all SMEs, including nurseries, with more than 250 staff and a turnover of more than ¤50m have to produce detailed reports on their energy use every four years. Lead assessors usually carry out an energy audit, though for now at least, there is no obligation to implement any of the efficiency measures identified. The deadline for this first stage was December 2015, but Ms Timlin suspects many have missed this and the subsequent extended deadline.
Even with Brexit looming and uncertainty over ESOS’s future, Ms Timlin says, ‘Nurseries will be keen to demonstrate good organisational management of resources to parents who increasingly seek this, and they’ll want to take action around energy savings, regardless of European political direction.’
ZERO TO LANDFILL?
Cheryl Hadland, managing director of Hadland Care Group, which owns and manages 17 branches of Tops Day Nurseries, is given the moniker ‘Mrs Womble’ by staff because of her dislike of waste. She undertook her own audit, instead of paying a third party. She says, ‘It became apparent that small changes could deliver a large difference financially.’
Using invoicing records, Ms Hadland devised a plan tracking ten categories, such as energy and water usage, composting, reusing and recycling, sustainable transport, the building fabric (including insulation and solar panels and light sensors) and food waste. Carried out by each setting, the results were used to pinpoint areas for environmental improvements and financial savings. ‘The best settings saved 30 per cent on bills and had colour photocopying down to under 17 per cent. They also grew fruit and vegetables and ate them on site – the worst grew nothing and one had not even connected their water butt,’ said Ms Hadland. ‘Two had several children aged three still in nappies without good reason and some had done nothing to help staff car-share or use the Bike to Work scheme.’
Working alongside Green PEA, an energy saving scheme run by Poole Council, Tops attached fuel-saving magnets to boilers and water mains to make them more efficient, programmed printers to sleep quicker, added heating controls to appliances and timers to water coolers. It has also signed up to the Business Travel Network to investigate sustainable transport alternatives for staff. Since the changes, fuel savings of up to 24 per cent each for gas and electricity have been made.
The company now has an ambitious ‘zero to landfill’ policy, where any waste that can’t be reused is recycled, composted or incinerated, or sent to farms, while single-use plastics such as in balloons and aprons are banned.
SMALL CHANGES
For smaller settings with less spending power, Ms Hadland says small changes can help. ‘We used a million pieces of A4 photocopy paper a year and colour copies were costing us five pence each on top of that. Just a 20 per cent saving on the amount of paper we use has delivered savings worth thousands of pounds.’
However, audits and the flaws they expose can be daunting for smaller settings. Ms Timlin advises smaller nurseries to identify opportunities to improve performance by typically looking at energy usage as a priority, then waste, water, food waste and paper and plastics.
‘If you want to reduce costs, get the staff to read meters and understand why you want to reduce costs,’ says Sam Moore, head of energy solutions at UK Energy Partners, the company behind the UK’s most energy-efficient schools. ‘You need to look at your energy consumption before you can tackle anything. Following that, you can introduce simple steps like remembering to switch lights and equipment off.
‘Once you understand it, you can look at reducing it through some upgrades like LED lights, which can save up to 80 per cent on lighting costs. People make the mistake of jumping to the last stages first and thinking about how they can generate energy themselves – that’s a mistake.’
For example, single setting Little Earthworms nursery in Brighton, which has just 29 children, has solar panels on its roof, dispelling the myth that small in size has to mean small thinking. Manager Sylvia Roberts says the panels have reduced its hot water costs by 15 per cent since it opened in 2010. The setting also has its younger children in washable nappies (reducing its clinical waste by 90 per cent).
‘We never plan it this way – we just incorporate it into what we do on a daily basis: we buy toys from jumble sales, use cloth nappies and our food scraps are fed to our chickens, put in our wormery or composted and used to grow vegetables. Very little ends up in landfill – we have a small bin every week for waste.’
Meanwhile, nursery director Andrea McCormack of Green Giraffe in Cardiff, says using technology has helped slash her annual paper bill. ‘We used to give each parent a daily diary – a print-out of what their child had been up to each day. That used 200 sheets a day. Just by switching to First Steps tracker, we’ve saved more than £2,000 a year on paper and now send diaries along with photos and videos straight to parents’ phones. We do everything online now, from billing to Christmas cards.’
In Brighton, Ms Roberts says she is surprised by the lack of camaraderie nurseries have shown around sharing good practice. ‘They’re protective – not wanting others to know how to improve their settings – but it should be how we can all improve the whole childcare industry.’
Ms Hadland says everyone from children to staff is encouraged to adopt and enact Tops’ motto: ‘Turn it off, save the planet.’
‘It is simply worth the effort. We have to change our own behaviour, that of our colleagues, children and, ideally, families too.’
Identifying staff who show an interest in green issues has worked well in incentivising others. Tops uses incentives, rewarding innovation and commitment through small eco-friendly gifts, and once a year gives the group’s greenest nursery a green award.
Ms Roberts points out managers of small settings might feel that while the principle of sustainability is laudable, it is too challenging. ‘Looking at one thing at a time really helps to make these changes feasible,’ she says. Green Giraffe’s Ms McCormack says: ‘More nurseries need to be doing more online and using new software – it makes things easier for everyone.’
Ultimately, says Ms Hadland, ‘People need to know about the damage we are causing through our wasteful behaviour – if they don’t know, how can they care?’
SOURCES OF INSPIRATION
The Carbon Trust has launched a variety of new schemes for larger and smaller nurseries including audits and a Green Business Fund of up to £10,000 towards energy-saving measures for small and medium-sized businesses. SME nurseries can attend its free Energy Efficiency Workshops, which are running throughout Britain in 2017.
Other methods of reducing environmental footprints have been to ensure less waste goes to landfill. Landfill tax, currently at £84 a tonne, and clinical waste disposal costs, can be slashed by adopting reusable nappies, while items which can’t be reused, including electrical items, are recycled by many councils.
FURTHER INFORMATION
www.eco-schools.org.uk/resources/ljmu-early-years-resource-packs
