Green Shipping Containers – How Green Are They?

Now I don’t mean by this that I am going to talk to you about painting your second hand containers green so it blends into the countryside. This blog is about how by buying a shipping container you can flex your environmentally friendly muscles and feel good about the fact that you have done your bit to help the planet (and got a really good product into the bargain!!).

If you decide to buy second hand containers then, obviously, you are recycling an industrial product by giving it a new life. Most people use their ex-shipping containers as a means of storage. With the addition of a lockbox and a hardened steel shackle padlock you have a storage container that is not only extremely secure but has a whole new useful purpose.

New/once used shipping containers also can be environmentally friendly. When used as part of a construction project these containers can be erected in much less time (and therefore use much less energy) than traditional construction methods. A recent well known example of this was the Travelodge in Uxbridge. Costs were a third . less than a traditional build, and construction took a matter of months. All achieved by using purpose built containers which were put together in no time on site.

Both a new shipping container and used storage container can be converted into affordable housing that is ideal for enabling nurses, teachers, students etc to live near to their place of work/study. This reduces the carbon footprint by abolishing the need to commute.

On the subject of accommodation, shipping container conversions slot easily into towns and cities without requiring much – if any – additional infrastructure. They can be easily transported onto brown field sites and connected up with minimum disturbance to their surroundings.

The flat roof of a new shipping container or second hand containers is ideal for housing solar panels or growing a “green roof”. The use of ceramic thermal paint for insulation means that the containers themselves are often better insulation than traditional houses.

Shipping Containers are often used as receptacles for recycling. Think of the containers where you put your old newspapers in car parks for example. 10ft containers are frequently used to recycle clothes, shoes and the like.

Charities re-use shipping containers to transport items such as medical equipment, classroom furniture, books and clothes (all of which are being recycled themselves) to Africa etc. Afterwards the container is often used to provide the community with additional covered space.

At the end of a used storage container useful life it can be totally re-used by recycling the steel and wood and turning them into something else.

These days going green and doing your bit for the environment has never been so popular. Often, however, it involves additional effort and compromise. With a new shipping container or second hand containers not only are you going green by giving an essentially industrial item a new purpose but you will have a supremely adaptable and long lasting practical product helping you in your everyday life – in whatever role you have chosen for it!!

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Technorati Tags: Affordable housing, Carbon Footprint, Waste management

How Green Is Your Workplace?

Stop Talking Start Doing – IBM’s ad shows the way

We’ve all seen the TV campaigns, news stories and general buzz about reducing your carbon footprint at home. An army of newly-enlisted eco-warriors are going about switching to energy saving bulbs, insulating their lofts and stopping putting their TVs on standby.It’s commendable stuff, but unfortunately CO2 emissions from individuals are only a minority of the problem.The truth is that the largest part of the global enviornmental burden comes from businesses and organisations.  And just like any economy of scale, in larger organisations even a small change can have a huge impact.

This may be all true, I hear you say. Not my job though. Reducing the company’s carbon footprint is my boss’s job, not mine. Hell no. If you have a workplace, you can make big changes to your employer’s carbon footprint.Plus it can be a lot more effective than the actions you take at home.

Here are some pointers, small and large, on achieving a greener workplace:

1. Recycle office waste. The amount of paper, cans and plastic used at work is many times more than what you throw away at home. Why not try bringing in recycle containers in accessible locations. Its simpler than you think, as there are countless government and charity programs to do this for you for free.
2. Drive less to work. Emissions from car exhausts are so harmful, and they can be cut by starting a fairly simple car pooling system. Or better still, think about cycling or walking to work.
3. Switch to energy saving lightbulbs. Switching a few bulbs in the house conserves only a small amount of energy. But think of how much more energy is used in lighting up your office and you begin to see how powerful a simple thing like switching to energy saving bulbs could be.
4. Green Information Technology. The energy usage of IT systems is huge for the majority of companies and organisations. You can make a big difference simply by making sure your monitor isn’t left on standby when you finish work. Or better still, get on to your IT department to review their “green baseline”. Get them to perform some proper asset tracking on all office IT equipment, using professional asset management software, a business can dramatically reduce its carbon footprint and help meet increasingly stringent government environmental requirements.
5. Campaigning. Go to the next level. Get like-minded colleagues together to run green campaigns and the real revolution begins.By putting pressure on our bosses to take seriously their green duties we little guys can make a real difference. Very often going green also saves a lot of money, as the TV ad above shows.  For example, companies involved in transporting goods and supplies often generate millions of tons of CO2. Pushing them to properly review their transport and logistics management and make the smallest of improvements can save them big money and dramatically reduce their carbon footprint in the process.

This is just a starting point on the subject. This article was primarly aimed at getting your juices flowing about this issue. Agree? Disagree? Feel free to air your thoughts!

Technorati Tags: campaigning, carbon emissions, Carbon Footprint, environment, green, green at work, workplace

Carbon Footprint Awareness Is Important

Carbon Footprint Awareness

There are still many people who have no concept of what a carbon footprint is or how it is produced. The impact we all have on global warming is reflected not only in our personal production of greenhouse gases but in the products we use. This isn’t surprising, it’s just a fact of life that there are many distractions that take place and we take for granted the imprint we are leaving on the world, just by living.

I’ll give you a simple personal example of how my family takes energy use for granted. In our house we have multiple digital clocks and they all run 24 hours a day, one in each room – the microwave, the conventional oven, the CD player, the stereo and in each bedroom all has a clock and each one is sucking up passive energy we could be saving, and we don’t give it a thought. It’s just one of the assumed “rights” of living in a modern affluent society, we may not use it but we don’t mind paying for it regardless. Some people might be a little bit shocked if they were to find out exactly how much carbon emissions they are producing per year, not to mention an indication of the cost and how simple it might be to save a few bucks and the environment at the same time.

You Can’t Change What You Don’t Know

The previous heading sums up a whole range of human instincts and precisely describes one of the roadblocks in front of those trying to educate people on the importance of reducing our carbon footprint. It only takes a gentle reminder that there are consequences for the actions taken on a daily basis that people begin to realise that there is a need to change.

It’s only when you find out that the yearly average carbon dioxide production for running a car stands at two and a half tonnes that it hits home that there may be a problem. It also allows you to then set a goal to lower your number for the next year. Suddenly you have a goal – a quantifiable goal – that you can set for yourself and aim for with real purpose. There will be no way of definitively knowing the damage you are doing with your carbon footprint without some means of calculation. Trying to produce less in the future would be next to impossible to gauge.

The fact that we each stand to get a direct benefit in terms of cost to reducing our carbon footprint should have people more than a little interested.The cost benefit in question is an actual dollar saving! The word will continue to leak out while, hopefully, carbon dioxide doesn’t.

Technorati Tags: carbon dioxide, carbon emissions, Carbon Footprint, Carbon Footprint Awareness, environment, Global Warming