Metropolitan Police - Borough Environmental Performance Tables
Example of:
How reporting and evaluating can help embed sustainability
Key points:
- The Metropolitan Police is collecting data on carbon footprint, waste to landfill and water/paper consumption for each borough.
- Boroughs will be able to benchmark performance which will enable them to focus action in poor performing areas.
- Carbon footprinting can be a complex exercise. The Metropolitan Police has designed a simple system based on information that they have readily available.
The Metropolitan Police District covers 32 London Boroughs and comprises over 50,000 staff and 600 operational buildings. The MPS has an established corporate level reporting system, but the next challenge is to monitor and communicate this at a more local level. The MPS have developed Borough Environmental Performance tables, which will present data on the carbon footprint, waste to landfill and water/paper consumption for each Borough.
The carbon footprinting exercise involves four steps.
- Step One: Identify all the buildings in the borough under the control of the Borough Commander.
- Step Two: Identify energy consumption for each of those buildings, based on energy bills.
- Step Three: Calculate fuel use by the borough vehicle fleet.
- Step Four: Look at air travel emissions from flights from business related air travel.
Waste generation is monitored through a waste transfer note system provided by waste carriers and contractors on collection. Paper use is calculated based on the electronic ordering system, and water use is collated from water bills. Boroughs will be able to use the information from the Environmental Performance tables to understand their impacts and develop action plans to tackle areas of poor performance. Monitoring updates will be provided annually to measure progress.
Carbon footprinting can be a complex exercise, involving large amounts of data that may not be immediately available in the required format. It is important to establish the system boundaries for data collection, and ensure all areas are compared on a ‘like for like’ basis. In this way, variation between the Boroughs will reflect its size, location and efficiency. This process is further complicated by changes in the estate, and these need to be communicated alongside the data.