How the British Embassy in Phnom Penh is improving it’s environmental impact

In line with our Environmental Policy Statement we have undertaken the following  activities and changes to our working practices:

• we have a Green Team dedicated to driving forward more environmentally friendly working practices throughout our office operations.
• we have inserted an Environmental procurement statement into our standard Conditions of Purchase and are encouraging our suppliers to think green.
• a carbon audit of the Embassy's operations was undertaken by the local NGO Geres in order to set a baseline year and to give us a starting point from which to work on reducing our carbon footprint.
• we have replaced all of the electrical water heaters at the Ambassadors Residence with an efficient solar hot water heating system.
• we have installed rain water catchment tanks at both the Embassy and the Ambassadors Residence and use the water for irrigation of the grounds and vehicle washing.
• we have replaced all of the incandescent light bulbs at the Ambassadors Residence, with more efficient low energy compact fluorescents, and have done the same throughout the Embassy and our staff accommodation.
• we have installed LED lights where possible i.e. 3W downlights replace 50W halogens and 28W floodlights replace 80W sodium lamps
• we use recycled toner cartridges in all our laser printers, which have also been converted to print double sided as standard.
• we have reduced the size of our vehicle fleet
• we no longer use disposable plastic cups for our drinking water and recycle most of our waste paper and other materials through a local NGO, Friends and Indochina Starfish Foundation.
• we have set up a compost bin to recycle our green garden waste.
• we are working on communicating what we have done to other businesses and diplomatic missions in Cambodia so that we can share our experiences and learn from each other.
• we have replaced an old petrol engined tuk-tuk messenger vehicle with one powered by cleaner Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG).
• we have an electric motorbike for our handyman to use to get to all our properties. This replaced a petrol one.

We are continuing to strive to improve the way we work and would welcome any further suggestions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LPG messenger van and electric motorbike