I wanted to revisit Verity's article on the Greening of Training at the beginning of the year. So with thanks to her for some of the ideas and with the question "Has anything changed much?" here goes...
“Sustainability”, “carbon footprints”, “energy emissions” are buzz words being bandied about at the moment. Your clients may have a leaning towards ‘green’ or not, but the fact remains that whatever type of business you are in, the need to keep your emissions low and awareness of environmental issues high has never been greater.
Blended learning approaches to your training provision can help meet our responsibilities in respect of green issues– as well as providing cost-effective, accessible training of course!
5 top tips to go green
1. Put more learning online to avoid needless travel and strain on the planet. There are many learning platforms available now which can be used for pretty much all types of training (correct me if I’m wrong!)
2. Cut out travel as much as possible by using blended learning tools, like webinars, to disseminate information
3. If you do choose some F2F content, a city centre venue can mean that trainers and delegates could use public transport to get there, unless they have mobility problems of course. Another option is car sharing and the take-up can be surprisingly positive with a spin-off that delegates
4. Organise virtual meetings to slash travel costs and remain green and with an increase in the number of companies using teleconference facilities for geographically dispersed employees, people are getting used to communicating and learning virtually.
5. Be careful about waste. Upload documents on to your intranet, use an online tool like Google documents or send your handouts through email rather than print out loads and end up throwing them into the recycling bin!
Get you managers to go green or go green yourself by attending this FREE webinar from your armchair! How to be a More Effective Manager & Get Better Results with Less Stress Sign up for your place here
Is elearning a green option? Interesting question. It cuts down on paper but costs more in electricity, so is elearning greener than other forms of training? If you want to find out more read “The Greening of training”
One Response
Greening of learning
Good points, but many more to hit: e.g. the electronic communication needs also energy, emits CO2 etc…..so any energy saving measures contained e.g. in our Good Housekeeping Guide for Offices might be useful, the offset of CO2 created by travels to traning by contributing to http://www.atmosfair.com fro setoff of emissions, and there is a lot to be done also by improving the enviroinmental impact of F2F learning: E.g. there is a Guide for environmentally friendly organisation of events which was prepared by the German Ministry for Environment for EU presidency and should therefore be also available in English and even other languages at the Minstry’s Website….I add the data below…if you don’t succeed get in touch with kuerzingeredith@aol.com, Koenigswinter, Germany
zur EU-Ratspräsidentschaft
und G8-Präsidentschaft
Deutschlands im Jahr 2007
Herausgeber: Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit (BMU)
Referat ZG III 6
11055 Berlin
E-Mail: service@bmu.bund.de
Internet: http://www.bmu.de
Umweltbundesamt (UBA)
Internet: http://www.umweltbundesamt.de
Leitfaden für die umweltgerechte
Organisation von Veranstaltungen