Over recent years the environment has come more and more to the forefront of everyones’ mind and with the present generation being the ones tasked with making a change we have found ourselves at Insignia Creative thinking very carefully about how we approach business decisions with regards to the environment.
Our MD Richard has always been keen to do what he can and has recently swapped his car to a hybrid model and often walks the 2 miles to the office from his home rather than driving.
Recently he has installed solar panels to his home which are linked to solar battery storage to cut down on the demand being placed on the national grid whilst his electricity supplier uses only UK based renewable electricity.
Richard’s business partner Peter has been undertaking the task of adding an air source heat pump to his property and is also part of the ShellGO+ initiative to help offset his personal carbon footprint.
With the domestic side gathering pace we have started to look at Insignia’s approach to how we can reduce the businesses carbon footprint.
Some of our staff members who live outside of the Torquay catchment area have continued home working which helps to limit their carbon footprint by not driving to and from the office whilst closer staff are choosing to walk to work rather than drive or even use standard or electric bicycles.
We are limited somewhat on how we can reduce our carbon footprint as we rent our office space but we have looked at other areas where we can make a difference.
Printers
As part of our pledge we only use printers who offer paper stocks which are Forest Stewardship Council (https://fsc.org/en) approved, use vegetable inks and also have a strong environmental policy and are striving to meet the government and world demands for carbon neutrality.
Hosting
Whilst hosting requirements are inevitably power hungry our main web and email hosting provider runs a modern office which is completely powered by solar technology and they are continuing to look to offset their carbon footprint further.
Office
Within the office we have LED lights fitted for low energy use and we have recently switched all cleaning products to eco friendly versions.
All communications between ourselves and customer are digital where possible and we also physically print very little with any printed material being shredded and recycled.
We are also looking to make all customer meetings via video call and only have physical meetings when strictly necessary helping to reduce both ours and our customers travel footprint.
Working towards carbon neutral
With the end goal to make Insignia Creative carbon neutral or even carbon negative over the past few months we have been working with a partner to achieve this goal.
We have now worked out our annual carbon footprint in relation to how many tonnes of carbon our business produces and we are implementing the next stage of the plan to both reduce this and offset any remaining carbon.
We have also undertaken a tree planting program which we have linked to our invoicing system so that we plant a number of trees every month based on our customer spend.
We are happy to say that in October 2021 we planted 20 trees which sequesters 6 tonnes of CO2. If you would like to follow our progress then please sign up to our newsletter below or click here to see our carbon offsetting page.
As we continue to work towards carbon neutral and beyond we will update our blog and don’t forget to come back to our carbon offsetting page where you can see our tree planting progress.
