AsiaLIFE

Earlier in the year, the U.K. Embassy in Phnom Penh became the proud recipient of the first ever ‘Foreign Secretary’s Award for Greening the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’. According to Rob Bateson, leader of the embassy’s green team, the award came as a complete surprise. “I think it was partly because the environment we work in is so much harder than that of many of our posts,” he says. Being green in Cambodia is not easy. “I think that’s partly why we won this award,” he adds. “We’ve been doing it in a country where this sort of environmental management isn’t there.” Nevertheless, since the start of the green project in 2006, the embassy has managed to become more environmentally friendly in many domains.

“We started by putting together a green team,” Rob says. “We made sure that there was a ‘greenie’ in each section. “Next, we had to find out what our baseline was, i.e. what our carbon footprint was.” The Embassy commissioned Geres, a French environmental NGO, to do a carbon audit on the embassy building as well as the Ambassador’s residence. “Their report highlighted areas where we didn’t have information easily at hand, such as on airline flights,” Rob says. “This gave us an incentive to be more accurate next time.”

Cut and Save

The carbon audit revealed where most spending occurred and encouraged the green team to find less polluting solutions. “Unsurprisingly, transport, both by air and land, was a fairly large component,” Rob says. In response the team introduced a video conferencing system to minimise air travel, and reduced the vehicle fleet making sure the Embassy was left with the most efficient cars. “You’ve got to be pragmatic,” he admits. “It would have been great if we’d gone for eco-friendly Priuses, however, in Phnom Penh, and especially when travelling around the country, you need a four-wheel drive.”

One car, converted to run on bio-diesel, was later bought by the Ambassador to become his private car. The car needed minimal work to be converted, and while it runs as well as before, it costs less. “We buy the fuel from Bio-Diesel Cambodia, who makes it from used cooking oil from restaurants around town,” he explains. The embassy’s messenger van was also converted to run on cooking gas, and the regular motorbike was exchanged for an electric one. Another big carbon spend was on energy and electricity. Lights were changed into more environmentally friendly ones, and staff collectively decided on a comfortable, constant room temperature. A centralised time switch was installed to make sure air conditioning units were turned off at the end of the day. Measures such as putting in push-button taps and dual flush toilets in bathrooms, as well as collecting rain water for irrigation and washing cars, also had significant effects. “After a year, we found we were using a third less water,” Rob says.

The Business Case

As with any company, the embassy had to ensure the green measures were cost-effective. “We have to make a business case for this as well,” Rob explains. The team’s efforts have lowered costs in some areas, such as water and electricity bills, while in other areas investment will start paying dividends over time. Availability of environmentally friendly product options was an issue. “We’ve been trying to push our suppliers to come up with green solutions,” he says. In his experience, the price differential between regular and green options is not always big, but suppliers need to be encouraged to find the products. He hopes that by finding the links once, suppliers will be urged to offer greener solutions to other customers in the future as well. In some areas the embassy team had to invent their own solutions. They contacted local organisations willing to recycle their shredded paper and even began composting on the embassy premises.

Being green sometimes seems demanding and time-consuming, Rob however is encouraging. “You have to engage people and you have to get their interest, but it’s not as difficult as it might seem,” he says. “It’s not rocket science.” He also notes it gets easier with time, as people get used to the new measures. “I think people are open to the idea and it’s not such a strange concept. The Cambodians came up with some of the best ideas.” Whilst the U.K. Embassy is arguably the greenest in town at the moment, Rob says other embassies, as well as businesses, seem keen to follow suit. The green team is eager to share information and help show how a little initial expenditure does recoup itself over time. “It gives you kudos when you can say,‘Look, I’m saving x tonnes of carbon compared to last year and I’m not being such a big drain on the country,” Rob says. “It’s not just a green wash, it’s a real green change.”