Commercial printer signs up to 10:10 environmental challenge
You may have seen or heard about the recent launch of the 10:10 challenge – an environmental campaign aimed at getting us all to commit – as individuals, business and other organisations – to reduce our carbon emissions by 10% in one year.
The 10:10 campaign emphasises that if we (speaking as, well, as a species, really) are going to make a difference on climate change, it is not enough to have our governments agree far-off emissions targets, although these are needed. Britain is already committed to an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, and at least 34% by 2020. But if we are to be in with any chance of meeting these targets we need to act quickly to bring our emissions down now, before too much damage is already done. 10:10 was launched by the film-maker Franny Armstrong, whose film “The Age of Stupid” imagines us looking back at ourselves now from the year 2055 and asking how it was that we did nothing or too little to halt the processes that led to catastrophic climate change. The lead character, “The Archivist” (played by Pete Postlethwaite), asks “We wouldn’t be the first life form to make itself extinct. But what would be unique about us is that we did it knowingly. What does that say about us?”
The campaign is at pains not to push people into defensive or cynical positions. It says that cutting 10% is not, for most people, all that difficult. There is a lot of “low hanging fruit” – easy lifestyle changes that we can make such as turning the thermostat down one degree, or turning off appliances at night – which will usually bring the target (this target – which will not in itself be sufficient to solve the problem, of course) within reach. Similarly for businesses, the target should be reachable through eliminating waste and increasing efficiencies.
OK. Leaving aside the matter of signing up as individuals for the moment, we talked about this at PrintHouse Corporation, and we thought we could and should sign up for this as a company. We don’t think there is much room for doubting the science of climate change. And although we’ve already done some things towards reducing our carbon footprint and lessening our environmental impact, there is definitely more we could do. (There is always more you can do.)
So, we’ve signed up, and are now in the process of evaluating our emissions, and discussing ways to reduce them.
If you want to find our more about the 10:10 campaign, or sign up yourself, please visit https://1010uk.org/
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Tom Clark is Operations Director at PrintHouse Corporation. If you’d like to work with a commercial printer who takes their environmental responsibilities seriously then contact PrintHouse on 020 8963 0123 or email Tom Clark at tom.clark@printhouse.co.uk
