We’re may not  be the most environmentally conscious company around but we’re trying as hard as we can.

We know we have a ways to go to win a green award, but thats not to say we can’t try and instigate as many eco-friendly tactics as we can.

Heres the current list of things we’re doing around the place, we’ve categorised it into “the Good” and “the Bad” (for the Ugly just go to our team page) so we’re aware of what we need to do to improve things and hoping someone out there can contribute and make some suggestions to this page for us…

THE GOOD

Recycling & Office Waste

Yes we recycle cardboard and paper once a week at our local recycling centre, we don’t really have glass or much plastics waste but we recycle this as much as we can.

We use “Veolia” for all of our general commercial waste:

“Veolia Environmental Services is renowned for its integrated waste management and environmental services to local communities and industry.”

They are the worlds leading waste management organisation :

“As part of our integrated approach to waste, we operate a number of technologically advanced solutions that are able to convert waste into a valuable energy resource that would otherwise result in the use of fossil fuels.”

Energy Consumption

Well we’re a digital business so we need a server running 24/7 but we’ve only got the one in-house, we turn off all our workstations at night and of course we turn off all the lights.

We’re in a 100 year old converted watertower with walls around 4 ft thick. The advantage of this is the building stays very warm in the winter and cool in the summer without the need for air-conditioning , so this is a huge saving, financially and in terms of CO2 emmissions.But we can still maintain a good working environment as by opening a couple of windows the 360 layout of the tower means we get great airflow - for free !

Boiler - A simple on-demand electric immersion boiler provides hot water in in our bathroom area.

We’re also looking at the most green energy suppliers to switch to in the near future.

Car Pooling

Mark, Kevin, Kamesh and Richard all take turns car-pooling which means out of 4 team members only 2 cars are used. Maybe not much of an issue but every little counts ! The rest of our staff live a 5 minute drive from work and in the summer walk or cycle in.

Web Hosting

We host our client sites on dedicated servers which need to be up 24/7 365. We realise this is a big amount of energy consumption and CO2 emission (23% of global CO2 emmissions are from data centers) so we’re currently in the process of researching the very best solution to give our clients peace of mind that not only do they get a high uptime but that the center being used is doing its best to minimise environmental damage (and we’re not just looking at companies that plant more trees to compensate but actually re-think their entire network and storage framework to reduce overall energy consumption).

Hardware

Well in-house we obviously use Mac’s , we don’t run any old-school CRT monitors anymore (this is a big energy saving), and Apple do take the entire manufacturing and recycling process very seriously (http://www.apple.com/environment/) and pledge themselves to become even greener.

But we’d be lying if we said choosing Apple was an environmental decision, it wasn’t, we just know, like a lot of Mac users that they are the best systems on the market and without them we wouldn’t have as successful a business as we do. If they’re getting greener on the back of companies like us then that’s great.

Print & Printing

We’re working on our supply chain information page as well as featuring a section on all our preferred printing processes, paper, ink and practices in the next couple of weeks. In house we use an inkjet printer and use this as minimally as we can.

Travel & Conferencing

So we all go on holidays but these days we’re sticking closer to home, so maybe one flight a year for each of us and the rest are road trips so we think we’re good on that front. With regards to conferences we’re doing more and more training online and using ichat for video conferencing saves a lot of wasted time and effort (as well as costs) in attending non-essential face-to-face meetings.

General approach

 Whenever possible we avoid using products or materials which use the following:

• CFC’s, HCFC’s and HFC’s.
• Solvent-based or toxic decorating and cleaning materials.
• Tropical hardwoods.
• Chlorine bleached paper or textiles.
• Products with excessive packaging.
• Materials which cannot be or are not recycled.

Whenever possible we use products and materials which meet one or all of the following criteria:

• “Fair trade” products.
• “FSC” certified timber.
• Have a high recycled content.
• Chlorine free products.
• From a company with a stated environmental policy.
• Predominately made from natural materials.
• Predominately made from local materials.
• Organic produce.
• Can be recycled.
• Non toxic water-based paints which incorporate naturally occurring pigments.
• Scrap paper is re-used where possible for internal printing/design concepts
• All publications printed on high content recycled paper wherever practically possible.
• Print runs decided on an individual case basis.
• Communications with suppliers, colleagues, conducted electronically wherever possible

Policy in practice - We have an ongoing system of seeking opportunities to reduce consumption, minimise waste, recycle and re-use materials and use the least harmful products.

THE BAD

Water Cooler

We have a water cooler even though these days we’re supposed to just use tap water. But the business is a local run company so we’re helping out them and it keeps our staff hydrated. It’s a tough call but we think its a necessary evil (if you can call pure, plain water evil that is !).

Driving

We don’t drive much but acknowledge that we do take the car when sometimes we could take public transport - although we do try and use public transport as much as we can. 

There are probably some more bad practices in there and as we’re constantly assessing our approach to business we’ll be updating this section as we change our approach. We are also putting together a supply chain page and will be “culling” companies that don’t have their own policies in place.