Diary of a DMS Guy

The COP-26 conference is the big news of the week, and hopefully has most of us thinking about sustainability from both a personal and corporate perspective.      The race to 1.5C is on, we are behind the curve but all is not lost yet.

Whilst it's important that strategy is set at Government and international level, it's something that we should all keep in our minds as we move forwards.

My personal journey on sustainability started almost by mistake nearly 6 years ago.     I was looking to change my car, and fancied a Porsche 911.  The local Porsche dealer was slow in getting back to me (I'm being kind, they never ever called me back despite a number of contacts through their web site - but that's for another Diary entry!!) .

It was suggested by a friend that I look at a Tesla Model S.  This was early 2016 and there were probably less than 500 registered Tesla's in the country at the time.      He said "drive it - you'll buy it".  

He was right!   However, I bought it for the performance, the packaging and the tech - not really giving a thought to the environment.

This lead me into the murky world of  Tesla Owners UK - the official owners group - which I've since been a committee member for.    Unlike me, many Tesla owners at the time were owners for sustainability reasons, and I was exposed to the subject.

Since then, I've become far more aware of the issues at hand, and what I need to do on a personal and a business footing.

We've come a long way since then.  

Personally, I've been an EV only household for a few years, have installed LED bulbs through the house, and have smart heating so I'm not warming rooms that aren't in use or when I'm not at home.  Sadly, I'm still on gas, but Air Source is on the agenda.       I moved house at the end of last year, and I fully intend to install solar next year with battery storage  -though I'm with a fully Renewable Supplied Energy supplier.    So, whilst I'm not Carbon neutral at home by a long way, I'm getting there!!

From a business perspective, we've also come a long way.

Low power LED lighting was installed 6 years ago when I moved offices - cutting our power requirements by a significant amount.    We started moving away from Internal Combustion for our car fleet a few years ago, with initially the move to hybrid, but now our fleet is fully electric.

A big power consumer is our datacentre, and I was delighted when our Datacentre became Carbon Neutral by moving it's energy supply to fully renewable.

We offset the remainder of our business carbon via a  UK based tree planting scheme run by Forest Carbon (https://forestcarbon.co.uk).

I'm continuing, on both a personal and business perspective to ensure that I do my bit to ensure that the world I leave to my grandchildren is at worst as good as the one I enjoy.

We still have a way to go, but the journey starts with small steps.

Next steps for me :-

• Reviewing our suppliers and asking about the Carbon status
• Trying to do the same personally (though this is more difficult!)

It would be nice to see a "Carbon Status" label on products and on adverts, in the same way that we see Energy Efficiency statuses on fridges....   That way as businesses and consumers we could make much more informed choices.

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