ACRE's commitment to improving its environmental performance and contribution to sustainable development was agreed by the ACRE board of trustees in May 2007, by the formal adoption of ACRE's first Environmental Policy. With the support of all ACRE staff and trustees, ACRE has implemented many procedures to its working practices to improve environmental management within the organisation. ACRE is committed to continuous improvement of its environmental policy and progress is monitored by annual reporting on performance to the ACRE board.
ACRE Environmental Policy
Rural Community Action Network (RCAN)
Our members are local development agencies supporting communities to take action for themselves. We expect them to adopt good sustainable development practices within their own organisations. ACRE promotes better internal practices within our member networks through our website, but also through our network community of practice on performance improvement.
Apart from the normal measures undertaken by most members to save energy, reduce waste, shop locally, travel less and recycle more, the following are some examples of the actions our members are taking;
Rural Community Action Nottinghamshire
has an Environmental Champions initiative working with staff in the organisation.Under its environmental action plan, the organisation has implemented measures around transport, teleworking, web conferencing, waste water, energy/power downs, heating efficiency, composting/recycling and towel use.
Norfolk Rural Community Council is implementing a list of measures, including home working, eliminating standby mode on equipment, taking out fluorescent tubes where not needed, installing water saving devices and exploring their purchasing policies. They are also researching the potential for micro-generation by using wind turbine technology for their premises and exploring the use of bio-fuel based heating oil.
Oxfordshire Rural Community Council along with a number of other members has put climate change at the heart of its strategic plan for the next three years and will continue to raise awareness of the important role of community-based initiatives in mitigating climate change. They will routinely promote energy saving and carbon reduction in their advisory work with village halls and in the support they provide to community-led plans.
Action with Communities in Cumbria (ACT) along with the majority of our members already has an organisational Environmental Policy. In addition they have also recently had their Cumbria Business Environment Network Gold Award renewed.The scheme is based on ISO14001 and helps organisations to manage their environmental performance.
We hold an annual RCAN fieldworkers conference and each year an element of this is devoted to sharing information and best practice related to environmental issues. In June 2010 we featured workshops on fuel poverty and how local groups can work together to address this issue and also looked at how Community Led Planning groups can be encouraged to pursue actions which contribute to low-carbon living, including through closer engagement with statutory planning policy.
