Outsourcery’s new eco-friendly status will enable its channel partners to complete their own audits without including their IT cost/carbon footprint in the calculation as well as satisfy requirements for end-users who are increasingly demanding environmental considerations in invitations to tender documents (ITT).
“After the launch of Outsourcery and new company values last year, we felt that it was important that we became carbon neutral as soon as possible. As a direct result, we are now in the unique position of offering carbon-neutral communications and hosted IT solutions to our customers and partners at no extra cost. This offers a further benefit to the thousands of small business customers that we have across the UK,” said Piers Linney, joint Chief Executive Officer at Outsourcery. “Increasingly, many businesses want to do their bit for the environment and have put in place business policies covering global warming and the associated Corporate Social Responsibility.”
Carbon offsetting works by assessing the size of the residual carbon footprint and investing in projects around the world that save the emission of, or absorb, an equivalent amount of carbon. Through this process, Outsourcery says it balanced out its unavoidable emissions and became CarbonZero. The company achieved its eco-friendly status in collaboration with co2balance, a leading carbon management provider, and has chosen an offsetting project in Kenya where it funds the use of 100 energy saving cooking stoves which are 50% more efficient in the use of wood fuel, saving 15 tonnes of carbon per stove per year. The stoves are all GPS tagged and can be viewed via Google Earth.
In a move to cement its environmentally friendly credentials, Outsourcery’s central London headquarters is an ‘eco building’. The building harnesses natural energy sources via a solar water heating roof and photovoltaic electricity generating panels. Energy level demands have been reduced through the use of ‘high performance’ window glazing to maximise natural light and PIR sensors to reduce unnecessary lighting when space is unoccupied.
In addition, the office has rainwater and grey water recycling systems, pulsed output water meters, and a ‘brown roof’ (providing bat boxes for a neigbouring park) to incorporate bio diversity. Outsourcery also has a renewable and local materials sourcing policy, which includes obtaining electricity from a sustainable supplier.
Outsourcery is working on reducing its carbon footprint further through a number of initiatives and has materially reduced travelling time through the use of its own Office Communicator product and HD video conferencing between its three offices.