Environmental Policy and Procedure

Introduction

The company is committed to protecting the environment and endeavours to reduce its environmental footprint arising from our services, activities, and products. Environmental work is an integral part of the company’s activities and our CEO is responsible for ensuring that the company’s environmental policy is applied and that any existing actions that are planned are implemented. To support this, we have implemented an Environmental Management System aligned to the requirements of ISO 14001:2015.

Responsibilities

It is the responsibility of all line managers to;

Be familiar with this policy
Ensure this policy is upheld and applied consistently

It is the responsibility of employees to;

Be familiar with this policy
Ensure this policy is used as appropriate

It is the responsibility of HR to;

Maintain this policy and communicate any changes
Provide guidance
Ensure that this policy and procedure is implemented effectively, in a consistent and fair
manner

Our impacts

The company is committed to reducing the negative environmental impacts of our own services,
activities and products, in particular those relating to:

Our data centre: computing equipment, energy usage, water usage, and waste
Our offices: water usage, energy usage and waste
Our products and services: carbon footprint, customer equipment and the goods and
services we choose for our offices: cleaning, furniture, stationery, IT equipment
Our suppliers: travel, equipment, waste
Our business: travel and those of our commuting colleagues

Our commitments

The company is actively committed to being and remaining a sustainable business and always strives
for energy efficient computing.
Through our Environmental Policy, we are committed to:

Ensuring environmental issues are considered in planning our business and managing our
operations
Complying with requirements of environmental legislation and client standards where applicable,
to meet our environmental obligations
Continually improving our environmental performance through the development and achievement
of objectives and targets. Our Environmental Management System (EMS) provides a framework for establishing environmental objectives, which are defined by the Leadership Team and documented
within the Integrated Management System (IMS) Objectives Tracker. These objectives are
compatible with the strategic direction of the company and support the continual improvement of
the IMS and measurement of its effectiveness. The progress of these objectives is reviewed on an
annual basis via our internal audit processes.
Providing the necessary training and guidance to employees and other workers to ensure they
are fully aware of the company’s environmental policy and our environmental objectives and
targets and are able to fulfil these commitments.
Preventing pollution of the environment and having procedures in place to deal with
environmental accident.
Reducing our energy use and carbon emission through our carbon reduction plan.
Achieving NetZero by 2035

The key areas of focus for reducing our impacts are:

Data Centre

Utilising virtualisation for a multitude of technologies, which include Virtual Servers for our
hosting business and customer solutions on our Public Cloud
Reducing power wastage from under-utilised systems and cooling costs compared with their
physical equivalents. This is achieved through virtualisation. This is mainly due to the ability
to consolidate workloads which require far fewer servers
Using a centrally controlled integrated building management system that controls and
reports the building’s HVAC (heating, ventilating and air conditioning) system status; this
allows our data centre to be temperature controlled which lowers energy wastage
Using the latest design principles to minimise power consumption, generate customer
savings and improve our carbon footprint. This includes cold aisle containment which
reduces the volume of cold air required and contributes to an accepted Power Usage
Effectiveness (PUE) target.

Products and services

Choosing suppliers who are recognised as being driven to lower their environmental impact
through recycling, waste management or travel management
Recycling electrical equipment by use of a WEEE skip, which meets current legislation; re-
selling mobile equipment to companies for re-use and donating computers and IT equipment
to charity

Products and services

Choosing suppliers who are recognised as being driven to lower their environmental impact
through recycling, waste management or travel management
Recycling electrical equipment by use of a WEEE skip, which meets current legislation; re-
selling mobile equipment to companies for re-use and donating computers and IT equipment
to charity

Business travel

Reducing the company’s carbon footprint from travel by promoting a bike to work scheme, making
use of technology, such as video conferencing, use of public transportation.

Offices

Training colleagues on the use of resources, with the aim to promote the recycling of paper,
products, and equipment
Reducing electricity consumption through the installation of auto power-off lights within our
offices; turning off computers at the end of the day and replacing existing light bulbs with
energy efficient ones
Regulating heating and cooling by thermostats, to curtail energy wastage
Operating a centrally controlled comfort cooling system which automatically turns the air-
conditioning requirement off at given times during the day and weekend, thereby curtailing
energy wastage
Lowering paper consumption by sending a minimal amount of our invoices in paper format;
instead, we deliver invoices via e-mail or to portals. This is an area in which we are constantly
working with our customers to further reduce
Recycling office and customer paper waste by shredding; this reduces environmental impact
– every ton of paper recycled can save 4,000 kw of energy, 26,498 litres of water and 17
trees. Every document securely destroyed is recycled, improving our organisation’s
environmental footprint as well as preventing data theft
Lowering paper consumption by promoting correspondence via e-mail instead of by
traditional post and requesting the recipient to consider the environment before printing the
message
Use of Hydro Taps within our office kitchens for energy efficiency and a reduction in water
wastage.