Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Carbon Footprint?

This is a measure of the amount of CO2 emitted through the combustion of fossil fuels as part of an organisations or individuals everyday operations.
Each one of us has a personal carbon footprint. Every time we travel, turn on a switch or buy something we are having an impact on climate change.

What does Carbon Neutral mean?

Many of our activities as a company produce Co2 which contributes to climate change.
We need to reduce our emissions through energy consumption, travel and waste. It will never be possible to completely cut out producing CO2 so we would use purchase the equivalent Carbon offsets to our emissions therefore creating a balance and becoming carbon neutral.

Why do we want to become a Carbon Neutral company?

There are many reasons
RSA is committed to being an environmentally responsible company. UK and GCC became carbon neutral in 2006.
Offsetting demonstrates that our business is serious about being committed to climate change and cares about the environment.
Environmental and climate change issues are becoming more high profile in the media and has the potential to affect consumer buying decisions where cost and quality are no different.
EU legislation stipulates all member countries to achieve 20% generation of renewable energy by 2020.
Companies are increasingly being rated against environmental and social criteria by investor funds and rating indices.
It saves money for our business, by simply switching off machines after we use them could make real savings on our energy bill.
Increasing amount of Employees would prefer to work for an environmentally friendly company.

What are Greenhouse Gases

The main greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, others include water vapour, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone. All of these gases occur naturally in the atmosphere around the Earth. They allow the suns rays to pass through, but then trap some of the heat which would otherwise be reflected from the Earths surface back into space. This greenhouse effect is a natural phenomenon. Without it the Earth couldn’t support life as we would loose all the suns heat. But by burning coal, gas and oil on a huge scale and destroying forests we have released unnaturally high levels of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. If the current trends continue we will have more than doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by the end of this century.
The result of all this is to thicken the greenhouse blanket and trap more heat and this is what we call global warming.

What energy savings can I make in relation to my PC?

Shut down your PC rather then logging out and ensure you turn your monitor off when you leave.
Switch off your monitor anytime you leave your desk.
If you notice a monitor still on when you are leaving the office turn it off
Stop using screen savers - they use the same amount of electricity as if the computer was on.


What can I do to reduce the energy used by our printer?

Print only when necessary.
Print only in back and white.
If you must print a long document print on both sides of the paper.
Print multiple pages per sheet.
Turn off printers and photocopiers when not in use.
Reduce/eliminate all unnecessary printers.
If you need to print an email, copy the relevant information to word and print.
Read and spell proof your documents so you do not need to reprint a mistake made.


How else can I save energy use in the office?

Turn off the lights when you leave a room.
In general, the small surge of power created when devices are turned on is vastly smaller than the energy used by running he device when it is not needed. Eg a fluorescent tube light uses over 500 times more energy if left on for 15 mins than the energy needed to restart it.
Do not have a personal fan or personal heater on your desk.
Phone chargers still use energy when they are plugged in even if they are not charged to your phone. Please ensure they are plugged out when not in use.
Use a ceramic cup for your coffee instead of using paper cups

What should I recycle in the office?

All paper should be recycled in the Green bins provided.
Your empty paper cups can also be recycled in these bins.
In the canteen there is an area for cans to be recycled.
A tree hugger will be provided to all staff to collect their paper waste and can be used as scrap paper or for taking messages etc.

Why do we need to reduce waste?

There are many reasons, from an environmental point of view land filling is just unsustainable. From an economic point of view the cost of waste disposal has increased significantly due to lack of landfill capacity and higher environmental standards now being applied to landfill sites. Also from a compliance requirement Ireland has introduced a range of policy and legislative changes in order to modernise all aspects of our waste management.
We all need to think how dependant we are on rubbish collections. If we had to be responsible for our own waste we would possibly think twice about our waste.
The waste decomposing in landfill sites produces methane, a greenhouse gas 21 more times more potent than CO2. Transporting waste and then incinerating it produces CO2.
There are many things we throw in our bin that can be reused or recycled.

Why should we reduce our use of paper and recycle it?

The raw materials used to make paper is trees, specifically plantations of conifers or eucalyptus trees. These consume large amounts of water and deplete the soil. Paper production uses a lot of energy and causes pollution. Every tonne of paper recycled saves 17 trees, 7000 gallons of water and enough energy to heat the average home for 6 mths.
All the paper we recycle saves tonnes of carbon dioxide per year