Protecting the planet through Responsible Actions
‘Environment’ is one of the four pillars of our CSR framework, Responsible Actions. The goal of this pillar is to reduce our impact on the planet by cutting waste and decarbonising, with a goal of reaching Net Zero by 2030.
We’re doing this by reducing energy usage, increasing recycling, cutting waste, reducing business travel, moving to green energy procurement and reducing paper consumption.
Through strong leadership, good environmental management and the support of our partners and colleagues, we’re making good progress so far.
Responsible Actions to reduce our emissions
We’ve introduced hybrid working, invested in videoconferencing and strengthened guidance around international flights. To reduce the emissions associated with mileage, we’ve introduced an electric vehicle salary sacrifice scheme, installed charging points at our sites and promoted cycle to work schemes.
We’ve installed LED lighting in our warehouse in Nottingham and in 2023, extended this to three further offices. We’re also replacing flourescent bulbs with LEDs as part of ongoing maintenance and consider renewable energy options on new leases.
We’ve achieved our target of sending zero waste to landfill, recycling everything from the pallets we use at our warehouse in Nottingham to the PPE used by our diabetic eye screening team. We’ve also invested in continuous bin liners to reduce the amount of plastic waste we generate.
Since our baseline year, we’ve reduced the amount of paper we use by 70% by encouraging digital communication rather than printing or copying of documents.
Progress against our emissions baseline
We established our baseline in the financial year ending 31 March 2020. This included all emissions in Scope 1 and 2 and the following sources in Scope 3: Transmission and Distribution (location based) and Transport (staff business mileage).
In line with best practice, we have continued to add sources of Scope 3 emissions and to refine our calculations. Since 31 March 2023, our reporting has included employee commuting and the waste we generate. To date, we have reduced our emissions by 60% compared to our baseline.
Emissions at baseline year: 1,361.6 tCO2e
Emissions at 31 March 2023: 537.3 tCO2e
Choosing the right partners
Choosing the right partners
We work closely with partners throughout our supply chain to ensure good environmental stewardship remains at the heart of their work. As a software and digital services provider, how we manage our ICT infrastructure is vitally important.
By partnering with NTT – who are aiming to reach Net Zero for their data centres in 2030, with their targets validated by the Science-based Targets Initiative (SBTi) – we have been able to relocate our infrastructure in a way that benefits our clients and the planet.