I’ve just been on the phone with someone in the commercial sector fretting over the use of paper plates in their canteen outside main meals and whether they should switch to ceramic plates. Look at the big picture, I advised, the cooling/heating of your building, business travel and electricity use by IT will easily swamp the impact of a few paper plates. Sort that lot out and you deserve a cup of tea in a paper cup.

This a general principle I teach to my clients – go for the big wins first – if you find it difficult to choose between two options on environmental grounds then the choice is probably not worth worrying about. We need a lot more 80:20 thinking in the environmental sphere and a little less analysis.