4th Best national practice and experience from Cyprus

General information

 

Name of the good practice:	Environmental management life cycle assessment
Name of the organisations in charge:	Think Twice
Website of the organisation	thinktwice.management
E-mail of the organisation	https://thinktwice.management/contact-us/
City	Nicosia
Country	Cyprus
Year	2020
Length of the project/practice	On going
Is the project/practice ongoing?	YES
Link to the training program	Link
Language of the practice/program	English, Greek

 

Presentation/Description of the method

Achieving sustainability of business activities, intertwining social, economic, and environmental perspectives, is one of the most challenging objectives for organisations and companies all over the world. What sometimes seems like a daunting and overwhelming mission can also be approached starting with small steps. Therefore, to support project managers across Europe, the Think Twice! project is here to share knowledge, experience and good practice examples of working and managing projects in a more ecologically sustainable way.
When it comes to Project Management, our first thoughts are directed towards our work environment, management processes and collaboration with partners. Considering Management in its broadest sense, Project Managers can explore ideas related to improving practice in the following areas. This project phase holds a lot of possibilities. If you want to concentrate on a specific topic you see in the pictures below you have the option to highlight it. Click on the associated picture and the related examples of good practice will appear.

Nowadays, it is very common to attach files to e-mails, but we do not pay attention to the amount of CO2 that is released. Although each individual attachment does not itself produce much CO2, this amount is multiplied by the number of attachments sent within a month or a year, before we even take into account the times this email has been forwarded.

1. To look at how much carbon is released, you can check this page: Page
2. To know how much carbon is released within a month, you must multiply the amount of carbon emissions per attachment with the average number of emails containing attachments per month.
3. You can do the same for a year, to find out the approximate amount of CO2 that is released in that time.

You can critically reflect on the impact of your emails with attachments and adopt different strategies to be more sustainable without compromising the aim of your action or the purpose of your message. Some points to reflect on include:

The way you have summarised the information and if you have included unnecessary information.
The possible alternatives to the email, and whether it is possible to use a USB within an office instead.
If it is possible to compress the file into an archive.
Whether or not it is possible to use pdf format, which is smaller and easier to transfer.
Is there an image file embedded in your email signature?

General objectives

• define energy consumption of sending attachments
• make people aware of email related CO2 consumption over the year
• Enhance ecological sustainability in European Union funded projects
• Raise awareness on the possibilities of green project management
• Establish good practice examples for ecologically sustainable project management
• Enable project managers to make more conscious decisions with the environment in mind

Why it has been selected as good practice

It provides a general overview of how to implement in managerial/entrepreneurial sectors how to use sustainable practices that impact the environment, the society and the overall ecosystem including the online digital world. The use of online communication through emails and how to become more sustainable is important hence the good practice described.