A voluntary role, alongside his day job as Managing Director of Major Programmes at BT Wholesale, Bruce Stanford is BT's Environment Champion for the mammoth IT company. With some 110,000 people; a presence in many countries; and products and services ranging from home broadband provision through to whole IT networks for large companies, he has his work cut out. BT revisited its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) agenda last year to include new climate change targets and the company has won the Dow Jones Sustainability Award six years running. It's not just about the 'feel good factor,' says Stanford. "Climate change is important to BT commercially. It allows us to win business," he says. The company this year won the 'Company of the year' award from Business in the Community for its "positive impact on society."

What key steps has the company undertaken to reduce carbon?

"We developed a [climate change] strategy which was approved by the board, including reducing our consumption and carbon footprint as a company; influencing suppliers and customers; and engaging our own people.

"Most people don't realise how big we are on energy - BT purchases 0.7% of the UK's electricity. To reduce our consumption, we've signed a Green Energy Contract, which is for half renewable energy and half Combined Heat and Power (CHP). The Contract, the world's largest, made people sit up and take notice."

How does the 'Champion' role at BT work?

"While we have a dedicated staff to drive CSR, it works better in a large corporation if you have a senior executive to champion and provide visibility widely across in the company.

"The piece that was missing in our ecosystem was a direct engagement with our lines of business. We now have a champion close to the leadership teams of all lines of business. That's when things start to happen.

"There are six main parts to the company; in each there's a champion and we meet once a month. Many other champions, for example, for Wales, have also emerged - there is no limit to how many champions you can have! My role is to provide leadership and support to those that carry out the activities and to inspire our people who contribute to the climate change agenda.

"People are set in their ways and we need to engage them in our journey. It's more about the skill of involving people in a change and making sure people embrace it rather than saying 'do as your told.'" It's not policing.

How do staff contribute to lowering energy use within the company?

"There are Carbon Busters [comprising] middle management staff who have access to myself, the other Champions and environmental professionals - they provide leadership for the 30 [voluntary] Carbon Clubs.' We're trying in a viral way to make sure the complex parts of our company take on this agenda and drive it. There are people around the company who believe it can be done and we want to empower them. The company is so complex you've got to allow the individual parts to develop themselves."

Can you make staff to genuinely care about it?

"By having a viral network, you can get someone who's enthusiastic to get it to happen. Someone will worry about it because they care."

How do you get suppliers and other companies you work with to care?

"They've seen the light. They're happy BT is providing a lead. It's not a 'them and us.' We have a procurement policy that requires suppliers to consider the energy consumption of equipment."

What opportunities for lowering carbon does BT offer to customers?

"The most exciting opportunity for BT is what our ICT services can do for our customers' footprint. We're privileged at BT to have the products and services to allow customers to save money and lower their footprint. For example, the technology for refilling drinks machines by using remote stock control, so you move information around and not staff; or videoconferencing - which is having stellar growth - to reduce travel to and from work. It's about improving business by saving money and carbon by not having to move things around in a clunky way."

What advice would you offer to someone taking on an Environment Champion role?

"You've got to have the support of people, including senior management. It would be like pushing a stone up a hill otherwise. The topic is very broad, so you've got to hold your nerve, but it's the most extraordinary thing I've done in my career."

What's next on your low carbon agenda?

"We're looking at reducing the energy consumption at data centres. The BT twenty-first century network [the company's next generation £10 billion network transformation programme that aims to migrate BT's existing service-specific UK networks to a single converged multi-service IP based network] includes ensuring power usage is lower by changing network equipment."

What future challenges do you face?

"To reduce our carbon footprint by 80% worldwide. BT is large and growing all over the world. How do we spread leadership to every country we operate in? You can't apply British rules everywhere."

What are the main challenges to your Environment Champion role?

"Reaching all the parts you want to reach and making the message simple enough so wherever they are in the chain the simple phraseology - '80% of the footprint' - works really well.

"But the biggest challenge is to have the vision to see the bottom line benefits and convince the stakeholders it's what we need to achieve. At the bottom of it all is really good old fashioned business common sense."

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Best Practice Tips

Please visit the Forum here and share a tip that you have for organisations to reduce their carbon emissions. Often the very simplest ideas can have the greatest effect:

• Use your broadband more. You can be more efficient in the use of your time and save a trip by using videoconferencing, for example.
  (Bruce Stanford, Environment Champion, BT)

• Check for leaks and fix them or get them fixed. This is mostly dripping taps. Some Water Authorities will fix leaks free of charge if you phone them up.
  (Centre for Alternative Technology, Wales)