Sky and Global Action Plan
Working together to create the climate for change
Sky and Global Action Plan, the practical environment charity, have got together to fight climate change. The partnership aims to raise over £1 million for Global Action Plan and to use Sky’s resources and experience to help Global Action Plan reach out across the UK and Ireland, so that they can inspire consumers, and Sky customers and staff to make positive changes in their daily lives to save energy, save money and tackle climate change.
This is just the latest step in Sky’s efforts to address climate change. In the past four years, we’ve reduced our carbon emissions by 16% and we became the world’s first Carbon Neutral media company in May 2006. But where we’ve made the biggest difference is in helping customers and staff make changes in their own lives.
Now, with Global Action Plan, we can do more, much more, reaching out across the UK to help people reduce their carbon footprints.
Jeremy Darroch, CEO of Sky:
"Combining Sky’s resources and reach with Global Action Plan’s expertise and practical, fun approach means we can move faster and further in helping and inspiring others to join us and live a low carbon lifestyle."
Trewin Restorick, founder and Director of Global Action Plan:
"Our partnership with Sky will be transformational for our organisation. With Sky reaching one in three families across the UK and Ireland, we have the potential to inspire action across our communities to help more people make positive changes in their daily lives. By working together and making small changes, we can have a big impact on climate change."
Find out how you can get involved with Sky and Global Action Plan.
Global Action Plan Video Transcript
Jeremy Darroch, CEO of Sky says:
Here at Sky we believe in better for our customers, both now, but also in the future. And that means great television, great value and great customer service. But it also means that we want to play our part when it comes to the big issues that are facing us today. Take climate change, as a company we have reduced our carbon footprint by nearly 30% in the past 3 years alone, and we power all of the buildings we own in the UK with 100% renewable energy via the grid.
There are, of course, bits of our carbon footprint that we don’t have the answer for yet. So while we look for it, we offset these emissions using high quality, renewable energy projects. All of this is important because in my view, you only have the right to ask other people to change, when you’re already making those changes yourself.
But the real opportunity for change comes from coming together with others, 1 in 3 households in the UK have Sky TV, that’s around 9 millions homes. You can see how if we all make changes together it soon adds up to make a big difference and we’re doing that in 2 ways. First of all we’re doing the hard work for customers where we can. For instance we’ve cut the power of our new set top boxes by half, we’ve also downloaded new energy busting software to 4 million boxes. This new technology puts boxes to sleep overnight when they’re not in use. In the first year alone we’ve saved customers over £12 million pounds on their energy bills and we’ve saved 52,000 tonnes of CO2. Now 52,000 tonnes doesn’t mean much on it’s own, but if you consider that’s it’s greater than Sky’s entire operational footprint, then you start to see the possibilities.
We also to try to help and inspire people to try and make changes themselves and that’s where Global Action Plan comes in. You see we don’t believe in beating you over the head with gloom and doom about a planet in crisis, we want to give you practical, concrete, easy things that you can do to play your part in the solution. And that’s exactly what Global Action Plan does. It works directly with individuals and groups across all walks of life to help them take practical action in their everyday lives. Global Action Plan will help us to do more, faster, to fight climate change and that’s crucial because the clock is ticking. We all need to take action and we need to do it right now.
So what are we going to do? Well first of all we want to raise more than a million pounds to help Global Action Plan help more people do more. Then we want to work with them to help build on their great programmes so that people across the UK and Ireland have the tools to take practical action on climate change.
In September Global Action Plan and Sky are launching new initiatives and we need your help in making them a success. But don’t let that stop you taking steps today. Go to sky.com/environment now to measure your footprint, find out how to fundraise for Global Action Plan and get tips on what you can do to make a difference today.
Trewin Restorick, founder and Director of Global Action Plan:
Higher food and fuel prices are hitting us hard. Faced with rising costs, it makes economic sense for all us, at work and at home, to use fuel more efficiently and to be less wasteful. It also make environmental sense as reducing our dependence on expensive fossil fuels such as oil will decrease our carbon emissions.
Global Action Plan is delighted to have been chosen as Sky’s charity partner. Through the partnership our ambition is help people take practical action that will help them in the pocket as well as make a real difference to the environment. Our approach is not to bombard people with environmental jargon. Instead, with Sky’s support, we will create a range of innovative and practical schemes designed to make it easy for people throughout the Uk and Ireland to get involved.
Like Sky we believe that small actions can make a real difference. Simple changes, such as using energy more efficiently, and throwing less away, such as the million sausages we bin everyday, can have a significant impact. Our projects will help people in communities understand the simple changes that they can make to their daily routines that will help the environment and their finances.
Through the project you will have opportunities to take part in local schools and in your community and by the end of the partnership we will have achieved real environmental savings. We will have reduced the amount of rubbish we throw away, cut carbon dioxide emissions and saved water. Along the way our ambition is to help Sky continue to be an environmental leader and with your support we aim to make Global Action Plan one of the leading environmental charities in the Uk. Once again we’d like to thank Sky for their support and we look forward to working with them over the next 3 years.
For more information about Global Action Plan, the programmes we’re planning and how to join in, register your interest here: www.sky.com/environment.