We've been so busy making improvements to our customer service lately that I've completely omitted to keep our forum up to date.  How does that saying about 'best laid plans' go, again?  Of course, we're always striving to be better, faster and stronger and there are lots of things in the pipeline which we're excited about and which I hope to be able to write about in the coming months.

We all know that the environment, climate change, global warming or carbon footprints are big news these days.  You can't switch on a television, read a newspaper or often have a conversation without the subject cropping up.  Most of us have probably calculated our own personal carbon footprint and if you haven't you can with the WWF or the Carbon Trust calculators.  But have you ever looked into the carbon footprint of your house?

This week I attended a regular industry forum on energy efficiency which I have been going to for more than a decade.  Over the years there have been many instances when we've been sitting in a meeting room discussing low energy lighting, whilst the room itself has been lit with a mixture of halogen spotlights and tungsten incandescent tubes, both of which are far from efficient.

As usual we got onto the subject of lighting and I noticed that we were actually sitting in a room which was really very efficient, with a mixture of LED spotlights and CFL bulbs.  It's encouraging to see that things are changing...

Some of you may have seen the recent newspaper reports regarding our Five Golden Safety Rules.  These rules are designed to make our offices, depots and other workplaces safer for our staff and visitors.  They include simple things like; always reverse park, so you have a better view when driving away and always hold handrails when walking up and down stairs.

We recognise these as sensible actions to help encourage a safety culture at work, but the newspapers held them up as examples of "health and safety gone mad"...

Doesn't Christmas just fly past?  It seems like a distant memory now.  The presents have all been opened and we've had a look in the shops to get a bargain from the sales.  Most of us are back in the routine of work, the kids are back at school; so what's next?  Well, it's all about 2010.

It's January so it's the time of year when we think of all the things we did or didn't do last year and think of the things we'd like to change this year.  We make plans for the coming year and a lot of us often start with new year's resolutions.

I've just been searching the internet for some interesting facts and figures on the number of trees cut down for paper production each year, but there appears to be such a wide range of 'guestimates on different websites that I've given up!

One thing that I do know for sure is that over the past 12 months, at Atlantic we've managed to reduce paper consumption by 12% compared to last year's figures.  This accounts for a reduction of several million sheets of A4 and A3 paper in our offices.

Those well known words of Les Dennis on Family Fortunes very often followed hilariously embarrassing answers from over-eager contestants.  The large 'X' and it's infamous accompanying noise which followed just emphasised how ridiculous some of their answers were.

At Atlantic, we like to ask our employees about their views on green issues, which could be potentially embarrassing for us too.  As a company which prides itself on it's green credentials, it would be slightly humbling to find that our employees didn't share our views.

I frequently have to remind my family not to leave lights and gadgets on when not required.  Last night my 7 year old caught me out when I left the TV on standby.  My defence was that TV standby was less than 1 watt and that it's the games consoles and set-top boxes which have the high standby cost.  I also tried to point out that putting the TV on standby was much better than just leaving it on and walking out of the room.

Have you used the Internet to do your Christmas shopping this year?  A lot of people use the Internet to buy things because it's quick and easy and these days most companies have their own websites.  But for us, our website isn't just a way for us to show you our products and services, it's also an important part of our customer service.  It's designed to be useful, straightforward and a way of helping you.