Martin Uden

Representing the Embassy at the FCO Leadership Conference

This week, we have a guest blog from Michelle Ryumi Do, a Korean member of staff at the British Embassy in Seoul. Michelle was chosen to represent the Embassy's "Greening the Embassy Group" at the annual FCO Leadership Conference in London.  The Group was shortlisted for a prize in the "Greening the FCO" awards for its work on reducing the Embassy's carbon footprint in Seoul.

Representing the Embassy at the FCO Leadership Conference

It was a fantastic experience to be the representative of the British Embassy in Seoul's "Greening the Embassy Group" at the annual 2009 FCO Leadership Conference in London.  I certainly came back inspired with lots of ideas to make our embassy even greener!

The conference took place in the FCO building in London from 23rd to 27th of March.  Over the five days, meetings and seminars were held on topics as diverse as tackling the current economic crisis to how to reduce your professional (and personal) carbon footprint.  I attended most of the meetings related to the environment and low carbon growth.  It was very interesting to meet so many people who were full of ideas and were very concerned about the current environmental situation around the globe. We talked about various ideas for how to reduce the carbon footprint of our offices.  Some embassies were capturing rain-water to use in their toilet systems and others were gathering food waste to use as compost in the embassy gardens!

The FCO organised a tailored 'Cutting-Edge Green Tour' for all representatives of embassies that had been shortlisted for a "Green Award".  It was led by a very enthusiastic man named Vincenzo Di Maria, a London-based eco-designer.  We visited various sites in London that had been selected to demonstrate their sustainability credentials.  We visited an innovative shared working space called the 'HUB'; a five-star green hotel (The Andaz); and a vegan 'bustaurant' called the Rootmaster', which was a redundant double-decker bus that the owner had rescued and made into a restaurant.  We even got to ride in 'Green Tomato' hybrid cars!

I hope my experience will inspire staff in all embassies and offices around the world to realise that making your workplace green is not difficult, does not have to be expensive and can be fun!

Thank you
Michelle

Posted at 10:07 16 April 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[3]

Greening the Embassy

I’ve blogged on quite a few aspects of our work on climate change, but haven’t gone into what we ourselves do in the Embassy to reduce our own carbon footprint.  In fact I recall back in the 1990s, we signed up to a local initiative to act in a greener way, which was mostly about recycling and reducing waste, so it’s not as though this is completely new.  But now we need a clear basis on which to plan, so we’ve commissioned a study of our current carbon footprint from local consultants BSi.  On the basis of our current practices, power bills and travel records, they estimated that in 2007 our footprint was 508 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. We’ve set ourselves a target to reduce that by 12.5% by March 2012.

To me, it is very important that we set a clear example that action like this doesn’t have to wait until somebody tells you to, or passes laws forcing you to.  And the early wins are relatively simple, but still worth doing. We’re doing the obvious energy-saving things like adjusting heating and cooling temperatures, and installing motion sensors and energy-efficient lights.  We’re also looking at how we travel in Korea, encouraging staff to use the subway and buses rather than cars, while replacing two of our cars with hybrid low carbon vehicles.  Right now, we have one and another is on order.  Although some of these ideas have up-front costs, over time they are of course actually cheaper in terms of energy bills.

One thing that I am particularly pleased about is how positive the response has been inside the Embassy to this.  Staff really do understand the message and are keen to do what they can.  We’ll see what more we can do, keep you posted – and let you know how we progress to that 12.5 % target.

(Since February 2008, Martin Uden, Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, has been blogging in both Korean and English. His English blog transfers to the FCO's official platform today and the Korean version will follow very shortly!)

Posted at 21:58 18 December 2008 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[0]