‘Keep on green path’

Green Business Barbados coordinator Lani Edghill addressing The Nation’s staff meeting yesterday. (Basil Griffith)

Sat, September 01, 2012 - 12:02 AM

STAFF MEMBERS at the Nation were yesterday given tips on how to reduce their carbon footprint in the office and at home.

They came from the Future Centre Trust’s Green Business Barbados coordinator Lani Edghill, who was speaking at the company’s monthly staff meeting.

Noting that the Nation was one of the trust’s green businesses, she praised the company for implementing energy-saving features like LED lighting and using paper processed from sustainable harvestable wood.

“When we deforest areas we cause something call desertification so it is important for us to be conscious of the amount of paper we are using, as well as to recycle because the more we recycle, the more that paper will go back into the process,” she told staff members.

The Green Business Barbados coordinator urged employees to turn off equipment like printers at the end of the day, to recycle at home and at work and to invest in energy-star rated appliances and LED lighting in their homes.

She also told them that bundling their trips would save them fuel in their vehicles and urged them to eat more local foods and to start their own vegetable gardens.

Staffers also heard about some of the issues facing the environment.

They learned how illegal dumping and littering affected the island’s environment and the fact that some of the garbage that washed ashore along the East Coast was coming from a collection of trash and plastic that has collected in the Atlantic Ocean and washes ashore on the tides of the Atlantic Gyre.

However, she noted: “Eighty per cent of the garbage in the sea comes from land and this means it’s not just us throwing waste in the sea, but it’s also that we are throwing waste on land and that washes into the sea.” (HLE)