In autumn of last year, as part of an ongoing commitment to improving its own environmental impact, BITC North East underwent a carbon footprinting exercise, which measured the charity's CO2 emissions.
We were shocked to discover that almost 70% of our carbon emissions here in the North East were down to staff travel, and that a significant proportion of that figure was a result of my own commuting, from Saltburn in North Yorkshire up to the office in Gateshead.
When we started looking at ways of reducing this, we realised that if I worked from home for one day a week, we could potentially achieve a reduction of almost 20%. Given that I had a fully equipped office at home, plus a Blackberry and a laptop, this seemed a very sensible option.
Of course, in theory, the idea seemed straightforward, but with a very busy diary, this hasn't always been quite as easy as I had anticipated, particularly as we operate an electronic diary which means that colleagues can 'book' me out for meetings!
However, I've begun to get much better at planning ahead, and my team here are now very good at scheduling meetings to make more effective use of my time.
As an extension to this, working flexibly also means that I can avoid peak times on the region's roads which gives me extra working time.
I try avoiding meetings in Newcastle at 9am, for example and although it's probably difficult to prove, I'm sure that not sitting in long queues of standing traffic is likely to mean lower fuel usage.
What it has also done is help us to start thinking about future working patterns for the rest of the team: although the majority of them live much closer to the office than I do, there are clearly opportunities for them to work more flexibly, and reduce unnecessary travel into the office.
Clearly, this will mean some re-thinking about how we use our technology - most of the rest of the team currently have desktop PCs, for example - and it won't be possible for all of them to work in quite the same way as I do, given the nature of their roles. However, I certainly think we should be much more creative in how we look at things and not assume that everyone has to be in the office every day.
Later this year, we will be reviewing what impact smarter working has had on our carbon footprint, and hopefully proving that it really can make a difference to our overall impact on the environment.
Karen Wilkinson-Bell
Regional Director
Business in the Community