One of the requirements of ISO 14001 is to demonstrate continual improvement on environmental policies and procedures. Overview wanted to go further than the standard recommendations and so have committed the company to becoming Carbon Neutral by 2030.
This commitment involves a huge amount of work, not least identifying and assessing where we create a carbon footprint, and then calculating our carbon equivalency numbers. We started this project in 2020, so we have collected all this information for 2019 and we are now in the process of assessing our 2020 figures for comparison.
Of course, we know that carbon emissions for all businesses have been affected by Covid-19 during 2020. For example, our carbon footprint from travelling into the office will have decreased, but our importing costs actually increased. However, we will still be able to see where our changes are starting to make a difference.
Here are some of the things we are doing to reduce our carbon footprint:
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- Choosing to import goods by sea rather than air whenever possible.
- Starting a cycle-to-work scheme for all employees.
- Bringing in flexible working, to encourage less travel into the office.
- Replaced old, inefficient gas burners in the factory with modern, more efficient heating systems.
- Working with our largest volume supplier in China to use Euro-pallets – a standard European pallet that is eligible for the European Pallet Pool, where pallets can be reused and exchanged rather than thrown away.
- Implementing LED lighting across our facilities to improve energy efficiency.
- Improving packaging materials – we are already eliminating the heat-seal element of our packaging and are now investigating how to re-use our soft foam packing in the medium term, replacing it with fully recyclable material as soon as possible.
Overview is determined to make a difference. Our plans currently focus on the cradle-to-gate processes – from initial supply to despatching to customers – and once we are happy with progress here, we will begin to extend our reach across the whole lifecycle of our products.
Watch this space – we will be posting regular updates so that you can see how we are getting on.
If you want to know more, contact Dale Woodhead at Overview on +44 (0)20 8875 0984.
