I’ve been working at Corporations Home for simply over a yr now. And after I was given the chance to work with the atmosphere in our Estates staff, I jumped on the likelihood.
The atmosphere is vital to us
All of Companies House’s strategic goals have one factor in frequent: they contemplate the atmosphere.
Whether or not it’s delivering an awesome buyer expertise by way of our good providers, or ensuring the information on our register conjures up belief and confidence, we contemplate the atmosphere in the whole lot we do.
“However how do you do that?”, I hear you ask.
We use an Surroundings Administration System (EMS) which permits us to watch all of our actions in order that we are able to make sure that we’re compliant with all environmental laws. This EMS has held the ISO 14001 standard for 17 years, an internationally recognised atmosphere administration commonplace.
We’ve made nice strides in direction of assembly our Greening Authorities Commitments (GGC) and we’re properly on our approach to attaining the targets set for 2020 to 2025.
Earlier than the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Corporations Home was seeing a downward development with its carbon footprint:
- 1,850 CO2 tonnes, 2017 to 2018
- 1,667 CO2 tonnes, 2018 to 2019
- 1,369 CO2 tonnes, 2019 to 2020
What we’ve carried out to this point
This good progress is testomony to the tradition of sustainability at Corporations Home and the exhausting work put in by the Surroundings Administration Crew and the Environmental Working Group (EWG).
Some nice initiatives have been executed throughout Corporations Home contributing to those optimistic outcomes:
LED Lighting
If you happen to’ve ever been to our headquarters on Crown Means in Cardiff, you’ll know that it’s a fairly large constructing. And with massive buildings come plenty of lights! Regularly, the previous lights have been changed with extra power environment friendly LED bulbs together with sensors to make sure that they don’t keep on longer than required.
These modifications have had a optimistic affect on our consumption and forgetting to show the lights off in your manner out the door has develop into a factor of the previous. Simply take a look at the outcomes we’ve had to this point.
Our electrical energy related carbon dioxide emissions have been:
- 1,445 CO2 tonnes, 2017 to 2018
- 1,309 CO2 tonnes, 2018 to 2019
- 1,065 CO2 tonnes, 2019 to 2020
ZIP Faucets
We love our scorching drinks at Corporations Home. Earlier than the pandemic, we usually used to see employees within the workplace kitchens grabbing their morning espresso or a cuppa, so you possibly can think about what number of kettles it took to maintain our workforce going.
Now now we have ZIP Taps that present ice-cold or boiling water close to instantaneously. These faucets not solely use much less power, but in addition cut back the quantity of water we use. No extra guessing how a lot water to place within the kettle!
Biomass boiler
As with most massive previous buildings, it takes plenty of power to maintain our Crown Means workplace heat. To decrease our reliance on fuel, we’ve put in a biomass boiler to energy the heating system by burning wooden pellets, which is extra environment friendly than typical fuel boilers. We additionally make sure that to buy our pellets from respected sustainable sources.
Our fuel related carbon dioxide emissions have been:
- 97.52 CO2 tonnes, 2017 to 2018
- 95.64 CO2 tonnes, 2018 to 2019
- 89.09 CO2 tonnes, 2019 to 2020
Enterprise journey
A part of our tradition of sustainability contains our angle in direction of enterprise journey. Pre-COVID noticed plenty of our employees transfer between places of work, meet with exterior companion organisations and so forth. Throughout this time, we launched a brand new journey portal which requested extra questions on whether or not journey was an absolute necessity and the technique of journey wanted.
This platform, together with our ever-improving IT options (like Microsoft Groups, Skype) and knowledge sharing platforms (OneDrive and SharePoint) meant our must journey for enterprise declined. Pre-COVID, it had decreased by 30%.
Our enterprise journey related carbon dioxide emissions have been:
- 82.62 CO2 tonnes, 2017 to 2018
- 57.32 CO2 tonnes, 2018 to 2019
- 55.44 CO2 tonnes, 2019 to 2020
Waste
With over 1,000 individuals working at our Crown Means workplace (earlier than the pandemic, in fact), plenty of waste is generated. Now we have a bin for the whole lot! The Environmental Working Group has inspired a tradition of decreasing waste and recycling to nice impact.
The quantity of waste we generate is dropping and within the monetary yr 2019 to 2020, Corporations Home solely despatched 1.62 tonnes of waste to landfill. The remaining is both recycled or incinerated with power reclamation.
Our whole waste was:
- 242.91 tonnes, 2017 to 2018
- 242.22 tonnes, 2018 to 2019
- 215.82 tonnes, 2019 to 2020
Removing of one-use plastic
There was an awesome push to take away one-time use plastic from Authorities Estates. Corporations Home has made nice progress in direction of attaining this purpose. We have changed all plastic cutlery and cups with extra sustainable options.
On our approach to web zero
If the COVID-19 pandemic has proven us something, it is our skill to adapt to an ever-changing atmosphere.
New methods of working have been rapidly launched to nice impact, and whereas the fast impact on Corporations Home’s carbon footprint is unsure, it has supplied a possibility to take inventory of our least-efficient elements.
This may inform our future environmental technique, permitting us to fulfill our Greening Authorities Commitments and proceed our path to web zero.
Learn extra about our strategy to minimise the negative impacts on our environment.