Apprentices take steps to reduce council`s carbon footprint

Trainees on the Pathways to Youth Employment scheme are helping the council become a greener and more energy efficient organisation. 

Forty trainees attended the council’s training course on ‘Energy Efficiency in the workplace’ at various locations throughout Cumbria in September.

Members of the scheme learned about how all county council employees can play a part in preventing energy wastage across the organisation by making small changes to their everyday behaviour in the office.    

This focus on green issues in the workplace forms a key part of apprentices’ training and NVQ qualification. Having attended the course all forty members of the scheme will now become Environmental Champions, helping make their own workplaces more energy efficient.  

The course, and the apprentices’ long term learning on greener issues, is part of the organisation’s environmental performance programme, Green Action at Work, which also looks at recycling, sustainable transport and procurement within the council.  The programme will help meet the organisation’s target of reducing energy consumption by 10% year on year and will contribute towards its target to reduce carbon emissions by 25% between 2008 and 2012.