On-line entertainment guide goes carbon negative

With the Government’s Energy White Paper aiming to cut carbon emissions up to 60% by 2050, every business in the UK is feeling the strain of reducing their carbon footprint. But, here at Localnightsout.com, we have made a serious commitment to our customers and the environment.

We are pledging to plant a tree for every new paid advert taken out on our website, so businesses can now reduce their carbon footprint while promoting themselves in a green and effective way. Plus, we are also committed to considerably reducing our own carbon emissions.
Localnightsout.com has two objectives - we want our users to have constant access to the best information for all their leisure and entertainment needs. If they need concert tickets, limousine hire or a hotel room in their local area, our website is the one-stop-shop. But we also care about the environment. That’s why we’ve worked hard to implement a whole range of initiatives, which means we are already carbon growth neutral.

The first issue we had to address was the amount of carbon produced by hosting and managing our website. We realised that a typical web server can generate over 2 tonnes of carbon per year, so we looked for effective ways to significantly reduce this amount.

The solution was to join a shared server with 92 other companies. This means that the 2 tonnes of CO2 produced by the server is spilt between each of the companies, reducing their annual production to only 0.022 tonnes per year.

As well as lowering the carbon emissions of our website, we have taken into account a number of other factors when offsetting our carbon footprint, including lighting and air-conditioning in the data centres. In assessing every factor that could contribute to running the company, we have offset a significantly higher carbon footprint of 4.5 tonnes. By setting a higher target we are confident of covering all aspects of our website hosting and more.

So how did we go about actually offsetting the CO2 we produce? We began by making a donation to Blue Ventures Carbon Offset (BVCO), a not-for-profit carbon offsetting programme.

We wanted to donate to a really proactive company and see the results of our contributions. BVCO’s open expeditions mean that anyone can see the offset in action, and because they are verified by an independent body we can be certain our donations are going towards combating climate change.

In addition to offsetting the CO2 produced by the hosting of the website, Localnightsout.com also pledge to plant a tree in a British woodland or forest for every new paid display taken out on Localnightsout.com. All customers are issued with a certificate confirming the planting.

For this we have chosen Growaforest, a not-for-profit company aimed at improving the state of our planet, to undertake the planting of our customers’ trees. Growaforest is run by volunteers, using every penny generated to plant native trees and make the forests available for everyone to enjoy.

What is perhaps most surprising is that the cost of all these initiatives doesn’t impact on customers’ budgets. The carbon offsetting steps we are taking don’t simply benefit our own company’s carbon footprint, but also those of every company that takes out an ad with us.

What all this means is that rather than just being carbon growth neutral we can actually make a positive impact on the environment and climate change by being carbon growth negative.

To find out more about Local Nights Out, visit www.localnightsout.com

Free Prize Draw

We have launched a free prize draw with a chance to win £80 worth of Ticketmaster vouchers and £20 worth of Vue cinema vouchers. The draw is free to enter and is open to residents of the UK of any age. The closing date for entry is 12:00pm on 5th Oct 2007. For terms and conditions and to enter visit http://www.localnightsout.com

New online leisure and entertainment guide goes from strength to strength

Local Nights Out.com a new online leisure and entertainment guide makes it easier and quicker to plan a night out or weekend away.

The website was setup with the aim of making it easier and quicker to plan a night out in your local area or anywhere in the UK that you might be visiting for a night out or weekend away. I have found it very frustrating searching the internet for somewhere to go such as a restaurant or theatre and then having spent a lot of time doing that to then have to start all over to find a hotel, not to mention then looking up taxi numbers or train routes.

LocalNightsOut.com removes the frustration and time associated with planning a night out or weekend away by listing everything you need on the one website.

The website is still in the early stages, only going live at the end of April. Most of May was spent adding content such as articles and adding the categories as well as spending time on search engine optimisation. Search results are now going well and the website received over 60,000 hits for both the third and fourth months after going live (July and August) with first page appearances on all the major search engines for various search terms.

We agreed the deal with Vue cinemas quite early on and now list every one of Vue’s cinemas throughout the country. Every cinema’s individual display also includes a booking facility that enables you to book tickets for any film showing at that particular cinema for the time of your choice. The cinema listings give us some content for the whole of the UK already.

Apart from this London has the most content but we are working on adding more venues up and down the country all the time. When we have more venues listed we will also be adding an online booking facility for other types of venues such as restaurants and hotels as well as looking in to a text back service whereby you can text a keyword to a given number and receive a text back with the details of restaurants, clubs or whatever you have requested, in the local area of wherever you are at that time.

Also featured on the guide are “hot offers” such as weekly specials or seasonal offers which are displayed on the home page and also as part of a venue’s main display. Offers are also mailed out to subscribed users on a regular basis keeping people up to date with any new offers that have been added.

The aim is to establish Local Nights Out as a household name and be the first port of call for anyone looking for any kind of venue in the leisure and entertainment industry and to continue to add more and more useful features to the website making it easier and quicker for anyone planning a night out.

To find out more about Local Nights Out visit http://www.localnightsout.com

- Wayne Davies