How to run a clean, lean, green Embassy machine

I chose to dedicate my first “corporate” blog entry to the Embassy green work as the subject is so closed to my heart – my academic background is a combination of Journalism and Chemical Engineering, and so I have been an avid supporter of environmental protection. It is an impressive accomplishment to see how Romania has progressed in the last decade from a place rather unaware of and distant from such matters to a country that makes genuine efforts to promote eco-friendly practices and educate the public, particularly the young audiences.

A significant part of our joint work with the Romanian colleagues has focussed on green projects and awareness raising events. A notable success was the British Embassy-funded 2008 ‘Young Ambassadors against Climate Change’ nation-wide initiative.

We had the support of the Romanian authorities and the media to highlight the work of secondary school pupils who designed awareness raising campaigns on this topic. The mass media have been a close ally all throughout and helped us spread the info on climate change ahead of Copenhagen Summit last year and on new green technology such as Carbon Capture and Storage.

We in the embassy team have taken the green commitment very seriously, from recycling and collecting waste separately to trimming down energy consumption. We have a dedicated green officer who monitors our green record and effectively educates us about simple, common sense eco-practices. I know we are doing very well across the European network of British embassies and, together with our colleagues in Bulgaria, are looking at ways to synchronise green actions for better regional efficiency. We reduced the embassy carbon footprint from energy with 14% during a very harsh winter and cut down with another 14% the amount of waste we produce from daily activities. And we strike a healthy balance between the inward-looking approach to make our workplace more environmentally-embracing and the public display of our eco creed.

This year’s public diplomacy highlight has undoubtedly been the Queen’s Birthday Party, the well-known QBP. Officially we have been thinking for more than a year to dedicate the QBP to all things green. In practice, we got down and “dirty” in late March this year and so we had about two and a half months to roll out specific arrangements for the largest Embassy annual event.

So we put our heads together and worked to turn the venue, the lovely centrally-located Athenaeum building, well, its foyer, into an eco-friendly environment. Some standard changes were a natural choice such as replacing the light bulbs with energy efficient ones, arranging for waste separation and collection by a recycling company – British that is – and providing hand drying paper from recycled materials and ecological soap.  The food was mostly locally-grown to avoid air travel of imported produce from the UK. We brought to the venue a car whose components were 80% recyclable, set up a bicycle rack and provided a desk where guests could calculate their own carbon footprint. And we said that we would plant trees, in a collective effort sometime in the autumn, in order to offset the carbon footprint of the event. You can see here some of the photos and I know, speaking with some of our guests, that the green theme was a real hit.

Looking forward I am optimistic about ongoing performance and impact of the embassy green work which I see as a flagship of our post. With the renewed green commitment of the new British government, I have the confidence and optimism that the years to come will be fostering new, exciting opportunities for a greener, healthier, safer world for both our people.

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