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ARC's organisation
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ARC's office overlooks Kelston deer park. |
Founder
His Royal Highness The Prince Philip
President Emeritus
His Excellency Mr. Enkhbayar, President of Mongolia
Chairman of the Trustees
Brian Pilkington
The trustees are drawn from our three founding bodies –
• WWF International and WWF UK
• MOA International Japan
• The Pilkington Foundation
We also have two honorary trustees, from TVE and from the Dutch environmental philanthropy EMF.
Staff and Consultants
Director – Martin Palmer
Deputy Director - Alison Hilliard
Finance Officer - Mary Bellekom
Catholic Programme Advisor - Mary Colwell
Communications director - Victoria Finlay
China consultant - Dr He Xiaoxin
Communications Assistant/EcoSikh Coordinator - Laura Jackson
Water programme coordinator - Nicki McHugh
Graphic Designer/ Events Assistant - Kim Missen
Assistant to the director - Claire Powell
Shinto consultant - Michael Shackleton
Communications consultant - Susie Weldon
ARC is administered by a small team of full- and part-time staff, as well as consultants for specific projects. Our real strength lies in our networks and in the people that each faith has appointed to work on environmental issues.
Ethical Policy:
Here at ARC we aim to practice what we speak about, and so we try to be as environmentally considerate as possible.
Transport
Our Kelston Park offices are four miles outside the city of Bath on a road without a very frequent bus service, so everyone has found their own ways of getting to work. More than half of us use fully sustainable forms of transport: either walking or cycling at least 50 percent of the time. For some this means an hour-long ride each way along the Bristol-Bath cycle path, which passes beneath our office; for others it’s a 3.5-mile stroll across hills and fields.
Other colleagues who live further away use public transport - trains and buses – as much as possible, and those few who do drive make sure they try and car-share.
When we go to meetings we try to balance affordability with public transport availability. We have cut down our international flights by 50 percent since 2000.
Purchasing
This is important, as we are working with several of our faith partners, including the Hindus, Muslims and Jews, on ethical purchasing policies.
We try to follow the LOFTY purchasing principles; that wherever possible products should be Local, Organic, Free-range, Traded fairly and Yummy. All our office milk is organic, our coffee and tea fair trade and often organic, and our biscuits, provided to all staff and visitors, are organic. It costs a little more, but it is vital to support farms which are friendly to the earth and do not use pesticides.
When we provide lunch for visitors it is always vegetarian and often local. Our favourite lunchtime indulgences are Bath Soft Cheese and Wife of Bath hard cheese, sourced from the very cows that graze in the organically managed fields outside our offices.
We make sure that our locally-produced business cards are printed on recycled card, as well as our headed paper. All our copying paper and envelopes recycled, and we also support FSC for any mass-printing we commission.
The hotel we use in London whenever there’s a spare place – it’s popular - is the MIC in Euston, run by the Methodists, which has been expanding its ethical purchasing policy for the past few years (ever since someone from ARC asked why their eggs were not free-range) and now runs one of the most ethical hotel restaurants in London. ARC is now represented on their board.
Recycling etc
We also recycle everything possible in the office to minimise waste: plastics, card, paper, metal, batteries, glass and organic waste, which goes straight into the compost bin outside.
We always try to support local businesses and, in turn, our local community.
And since protecting the environment is not just about what we do but rather what we don’t do, we try to switch off the lights when we can. Where we do need the extra light on overcast days we use energy saving light bulbs. We do not use harmful cleaning products.
The journey
It has been quite a journey to get here.
- For a long time people would struggle with finding organic milk and sometimes would just pick up milk at the local convenience store. But after a visit from the team at Compassion in World Farming, we learned the difference in how the animals are treated, and decided to reassess our purchasing. Now it’s a rule.
- Sometimes it can be hard to persuade others to help. It took six months to get permission from the letting agency at our offices to get a composting bin, and when we did get permission we bought it ourselves. We are currently in discussion with them about switching off more lights in common areas during daytime. These things can take a while to get agreed.
- There was once a “vegetarian” lunch ordered from a local company which included (local) ham, because they had confused “local” with “vegetarian” and another lunch for vegan visitors which included butter and cheese.
- It took a while to find a source for organic (or at least low-pesticide) biscuits that were affordable enough for general office use. But Nairns makes low-pesticide ginger biscuits and Waitrose and Sainsbury’s sell excellent organic digestives. They look plain, but taste yummy.
ARC's headquarters is in Kelston Park, Bath, England.For directions please click here
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