How would you like your employer to hold you accountable for your carbon footprint?

WSP Group is doing just that.  The global management and consultancy service is pioneering a novel way to reduce the carbon footprint of its employees.

The scheme is the first of its kind and has been running in the UK for two years.  So far, 80 members of staff have volunteered to take part.

The Personal Carbon Tracking Scheme (PACT) helps to track the carbon footprint of employees who are each ‘allowed’ an annual carbon budget of 5.5 tonnes of emissions.

The company provides tools for employees to measure their carbon emissions every quarter.  Measures such as cycling to work, staying in the UK for holidays and using environmentally-friendly electricity providers all help employees to meet their targets.

There is a reward of £100 for staff whose carbon emissions are within their annual carbon budget and a £100 fine for staff whose carbon emissions are too high.  Most staff choose to donate their reward money (or pay their fine) to charity.  In 2008, the company was able to donate £1300 to the Woodland Trust.

WSP are now looking to expand the scheme worldwide.

More information on PACT can be found on the WSP site.

Rachel Pattisson is a freelance copy writer. She writes a blog called Really Rachel and you can hire her here: ThoughtTrains.co.uk.

In other veg pot news, innocent recently introduced a new ‘autumn special’ veg pot called butternut pearl barley risotto. Look out for it in shops now!

“For Zappos, our vision remains the same: delivering happiness to customers, employees, and vendors. We just want to get there faster.”

- Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh in a letter sent round to Zappos employees and published on the company blog.

Below is a video from Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos explaining what the deal means to him:

In theory this acquisition will give Zappos some great opportunities to learn from Amazon on the technology front and perhaps some of the Zappos company culture will rub off on Amazon in return… One thing is for sure, we’ll be watching with interest! Congratulations to all involved!

Andrew had heard that if a product listed on the Zappos website is out of stock then the customer service team will actually help you order the item from one of their competitors – they’d rather help you out in some way even if it means losing your business in the short term. Luckily for Tony the experiment worked perfectly and the customer service rep was quite prepared to help out!

You can listen to the interview here:

Previous coverage of Zappos here and here.

Breakings news from Fruit Towers (HQ of innocent drinks): an extraordinary photograph has surfaced on the innocent blog depicting scenes of human pyramid activity! Nothing like a spot of Monday morning team building fun, eh?

However, behind the scenes there are some suprises in store…  There was a fascinating article on the BBC News Magazine website earlier this year about how the lessons learned working for McDonald’s have gone on to serve one particular journalist very well throughout his life.

Read the full article here:
‘Everything I needed to know I learned in McDonald’s’

They’ve kicked off with a four day work week, a promise to fund employee’s passions and they’ve also given each employee a discretionary spending account. Read all about it on their company blog: Signal vs. Noise.

The four day work week has already been adopted here in the UK by the folks at Carsonified (among others) where staff also get a bundle of nifty gadgets to keep them happy including an iPhone, a 23″ cinema display, an Aeron chair and a MacBook Pro!

One of these mutimillionaire Googlers is the company masseuse who started her job when there were just 40 employees and has recently retired with a small fortune.

Read more in the NYTimes.
See also: our post about Google.org.