A Call to 10:10 Challenge

Many of us in the High Commission feel strongly about climate change.  The UK government does too and the British Foreign Secretary is signing up to the 10:10 Challenge (www.1010uk.org) on 8 February as part of the UK’s global campaign to raise awareness of the urgent need to promote a low carbon, high growth economy. 

We already have in the High Commission a “Green Team”, led by a local expert, who have been working for the last few months on calculating and reducing our carbon footprint.  So it was an easy call for me to sign the High Commission up to the 10:10 challenge.

This means that we have set ourselves a target of reducing our carbon footprint in 2010 by 10% compared with 2009.  My “Green Team” tell me that the main areas to achieve cuts are on:

·   air conditioning - we have already raised the temperature and reduced the running hours

·   air travel – we will cut back on flights where we can and make more use of video-conferencing

·   fuel consumption – we have arranged for our drivers and all High Commission staff to be instructed on driving more efficiently and we are looking at how we can use our official vehicles more sparingly

·   paper usage – we are monitoring paper usage and have set a target of 10% reduction this year.

We are also inviting British businesses in Malaysia to join us and take up this challenge.  I very much hope Malaysian businesses, other organisations and indeed individuals who feel strongly about climate change will do the same.