The National Trust has today launched a major new initiative to encourage firms to give their staff the day off on February 29th this year to help tackle climate change.

As part of the Green Leap Day campaign the charity is to give its 4,800 staff and 49,000 volunteers the last day of February off and ask them to use the day to undertake steps to cut their carbon footprint.

It suggests that staff use the day to either make changes to their home or garden – such as installing insulation, switching to energy saving light bulbs, starting a compost heap or planting their own vegetables – or get involved in community environmental projects. Those staff that take up the offer of an extra day's holiday will be asked to file a short a report on what actions they took, but the National Trust said there would be no disciplinary action against those who were found not to have taken steps to reduce their carbon footprint.

The group is also urging other firms to sign up to the initiative and use the extra day of salaried work a leap year provides to instead promote environmental action amongst their workforce.

Quoted in The Times, National Trust director-general Dame Fiona Reynolds said that the scheme had the potential to have a major impact on UK carbon emissions. "There are over 29 million employees in the UK," she said. " If just one million changed one light bulb and turned their thermostat down by one degree it would save 351,000 tons of carbon."

Brendan Barber, General Secretary the TUC, said the initiative would help improve staff work-life balance and called on the government to take up the idea and create a new "community day bank holiday".

Green corporate volunteering schemes have become increasingly popular over the past few years with growing numbers of multinationals offering staff extra paid or unpaid leave to support community projects. Advocates of the concept claim it not only improves environmental awareness amongst staff, but also bolsters morale and improves employee retention rates.

However, the Federation of Small Business (FSB) warned that while promoting environmental best practices amongst staff was entirely welcome, the financial impact of such corporate volunteering schemes also had to be considered. "The National Trust has come up with a great idea, but there is a danger it leaves small employers who find it difficult to build in an extra days leave looking like they do not care about the environment, which is not at all the case," argued FSB spokesman Stephen Alambritis.

He added that creating an extra bank holiday would cost the UK economy £6bn a year and also warned that it could prove difficult to ensure that any "green day " off has the desired result. "The law dictates you can't tell staff what to do on their day off," he said. "So while you can implore staff to take green actions, and it is to be hoped many of them will, you can't make sure it works. "