We take a proactive approach to good environmental management.

One of the ways we engage with our employees is through Green Week - our biggest group-wide annual environmental awareness week. The week is all about raising awareness of our environmental impact as a business, as well as providing an opportunity to share ideas on how our employees can reduce their environmental impact as individuals.

Green Week pledges

For Green Week 2017, we asked colleagues to share their Green Week pledges and how they were committed to making a positive environmental action.

Led by Nick Greatorex, our group finance director, many different parts of Capita got involved, with individual employees and teams sharing how they were committed to making a difference.

Pledges included increasing travel on foot or by bicycle to lower carbon emissions and recycling more.

Carbon Emissions Reduction programme (CERT)

Green Week provided a brilliant platform through which to share an update on our carbon emissions reduction programme (CERT).

The CERT programme has driven a reduction in our group-wide carbon emissions in the past year. The overall aim of the project is to create improved, more comfortable working environments with the most efficient use of energy and lowest greenhouse gas emissions.

As part of this initiative, Britannia House in Leek, Staffordshire, has worked hard to reduce their energy use. Looking at 2017 data, the amount of electricity used by the end of May was reduced by 25%, and gas use was reduced by 52%. The team in Britannia House has delivered an overall energy reduction of 34% across the site compared to 2016 use over the same period – a fantastic result.

This reduction in energy has been achieved in a number of ways, including saving energy by adjusting the main building management system, for example, by ensuring that lights only come on when they need to and when the building is occupied.

“We take our environmental impact very seriously and work to reduce our impact as a business. Green Week is one key way that we share best practice across the group, and demonstrates how important our actions are as individuals and as a collective.” Nick Greatorex, group finance director, Capita

Capita Travel and Events

Capita Travel and Events teamed up with local organisations to hold a week of environmental activities.

Somerset Waste Partnership visited the offices with some information booths to share information on how to make the most of food and reduce waste, the difference between ‘use’, ‘sell’ and ‘consume’ by dates, portion control and food storage. They also shared what can be recycled as local dumps or other collection sites, how to repair damaged clothing or repurpose it.

In a move to encourage more use of their two-wheeled transport, a member of the team also carried out services on colleague’s bikes. For a charitable donation tyres pressures and leaks were checked, gears and breaks were tested and rust cleaned off.

Capita India

Throughout the week, our Capita India offices worked hard to reduce their carbon emissions and achieved a reduction of 18,479 tonnes CO2 (13,273 from energy and 5,206 from travel). This amounted to a reduction of 16,187 kWh in energy compared to the week before Green Week.

This article was originally published on the CAPITA website here.