I’ve been working at Corporations Home for simply over a yr now. And once I was given the chance to work with the setting in our Estates group, I jumped on the likelihood.
The setting is necessary to us
All of Companies House’s strategic goals have one factor in frequent: they contemplate the setting.
Whether or not it’s delivering an important buyer expertise via our sensible companies, or ensuring the info on our register conjures up belief and confidence, we contemplate the setting in all the pieces 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 be certain we’re compliant with all environmental laws. This EMS has held the ISO 14001 standard for 17 years, an internationally recognised setting administration commonplace.
We’ve made nice strides in direction of assembly our Greening Authorities Commitments (GGC) and we’re nicely on our option to reaching 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 achieved to this point
This sensible progress is testomony to the tradition of sustainability at Corporations Home and the laborious 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 constructive outcomes:
LED Lighting
Should you’ve ever been to our headquarters on Crown Method in Cardiff, you’ll know that it’s a fairly large constructing. And with massive buildings come a number of lights! Steadily, the outdated lights have been changed with extra vitality environment friendly LED bulbs together with sensors to make sure that they don’t keep on longer than required.
These adjustments have had a constructive influence on our consumption and forgetting to show the lights off in your manner out the door has turn into a factor of the previous. Simply have 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 frequently used to see employees within the workplace kitchens grabbing their morning espresso or a cuppa, so you may think about what number of kettles it took to maintain our workforce going.
Now we’ve got ZIP Taps that present ice-cold or boiling water close to instantaneously. These faucets not solely use much less vitality, but additionally scale 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 outdated buildings, it takes a number of vitality to maintain our Crown Method 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 be certain 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 consists of our angle in direction of enterprise journey. Pre-COVID noticed a variety of our employees transfer between workplaces, 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 Method workplace (earlier than the pandemic, in fact), a number of waste is generated. We’ve got a bin for all the pieces! The Environmental Working Group has inspired a tradition of lowering 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 remainder is both recycled or incinerated with vitality reclamation.
Our complete waste was:
- 242.91 tonnes, 2017 to 2018
- 242.22 tonnes, 2018 to 2019
- 215.82 tonnes, 2019 to 2020
Elimination of one-use plastic
There was an important push to take away one-time use plastic from Authorities Estates. Corporations Home has made nice progress in direction of reaching this aim. We have changed all plastic cutlery and cups with extra sustainable alternate options.
On our option to web zero
If the COVID-19 pandemic has proven us something, it is our capability to adapt to an ever-changing setting.
New methods of working have been rapidly launched to nice impact, and whereas the rapid impact on Corporations Home’s carbon footprint is unsure, it has offered a chance to take inventory of our least-efficient elements.
This can 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.