Council reduces its carbon footprint

BARNSLEY Council has made significant progress towards reducing its ‘carbon footprint’ by greatly cutting the amount of paper it uses for agendas, reports and other documents required to support the democratic process.

The council has managed to reduce the number of copies it makes from 3,097,000 in 2003/4 to only 1,181,000 during the last financial year. That’s a reduction of 60 per cent – or 1,916,000 fewer copies in just five years. If laid end to end, the line of copies saved would stretch for well over 300 miles – or nearly the whole length of England.

The council has been able to achieve these savings by making far greater use of new technology, and in particular the Internet. All the agendas and papers for meetings are now made available electronically, so far fewer have to be printed. The remaining photocopying is done on recycled paper.

Commenting on the figures, the Deputy Leader of the Council, Jim Andrews said: “These are really big reductions by anyone’s standards, and they show that the council is serious about doing what it can to reduce its carbon footprint.

“Much of the credit for this reduction rests with the Environment Scrutiny Commission. They highlighted a few years ago the need to reduce our photocopying and to be more sustainable in how we operate.  We have taken this on board and the figures show that this is exactly what we have done.”

ENDS

Issued by press office, 01226 773442, email: pressoffice@barnsley.gov.uk