The causes and implications of climate change are now firmly rooted in the minds of almost every adult in the developed world. Whether we ourselves have been directly affected by the consequences of global warming is largely irrelevant - we're all aware of how real the threat is to our planet.

The plain statistics are overwhelming:

• Global temperatures have risen by more than 0.7degC over the last 100 years.
   
• The 17 warmest years on record have all occurred in the last 2 decades.
   
• The average sea level around the UK is now 10cm higher than is was in 1900.
   
• Arctic ice is rapidly disappearing, and the region may have its first completely ice free summer by 2040.
   
• More than a million species face extinction from disappearing habitat, changing ecosystems, and acidifying oceans.
   
• World wide, rainforests are disappearing at a rate of one and a half football fields per second.
   
• By the year 2000, there were 6 billion on Earth - 3 times  the population just 70 years earlier.
   
• For every one of these 6 billion people, nearly four tons of carbon dioxide is spewed into the air annually.

Everyone needs to take stock of their impact on the environment. Everyone has a responsibility to make positive changes for the sake of future generations.

Your Choice has taken the step to become an environmentally responsible company. What exactly does this mean? Firstly, we invited all members of staff to give their ideas on how we could reduce our environmental impact. There suggestions were then divided into two groups - one was for ways for us to cut down on our own waste, including energy, and therefore improve efficiency. The other was how we could encourage change in others, e.g. supporting suppliers who were following their own green agenda.

With some quite simple new procedures in place, and a new enlightened outlook on recycling, we have reduced our waste liability by over 30% and reduced our energy usage by a similar amount. We've also found that, by explaining our stance to suppliers, several of them have become more environmentally pro-active as a result.

There is now a real focus on improving efficiency even further at Your Choice, and we are now putting together a list of preferred suppliers with similar sympathetic environmental policies. As a consequence, all the products we offer to our customers will have a strong environmental pedigree and will be recyclable once their useful life is over.