Environmental and Sustainability Policy

We’re committed to leading our industry to minimise the impact of our business activities on our environment. We follow and promote good sustainability practice. It’s at the heart of everything we do.

We do more than just pay lip service to our environmental commitments, we actively practice what we preach. We see taking care of our environment as part of our BAU operations for every single member of our company. We strive to hire people with this same mindset.

The Key Points of Our Environmental Strategy are:

• We minimise our waste by evaluating our operations and ensuring they are as efficient as possible.
• We provide free consultation to our customers to assist them to reduce their carbon footprint.
• We carefully evaluate our suppliers. We source and promote our product range to minimise the environmental impact of both production and distribution.
• We deeply understand, embrace, and exceed all the environmental legislation that relates to our Company.
• We accept the responsibility for the harmful effects our operations can have on both the local and global environment and fully commit to taking active steps to reduce them.
• We measure our company’s impact on the environment. As part of our core business objectives, we set targets for our ongoing improvement. This represents a key pillar of our business strategy.

Sustainability

Sustainability is our BAU – We integrate sustainability considerations into all our business decisions.

A mindset of permanence – We focus our business activities with a long-term mindset of permanence and sustainability. We make long term investments. We purchase items that will remain usable for a significant lifecycle, steering away from rapid obsolescence and single use items.

Sustainable growth – As a company, ITVET have grown organically every year. We carefully measure the effects of our business growth against the cost to our environment and health and wellbeing. “Growth at all costs” is not a mantra that aligns with our core values.

Our Proactive Approach to Recycling

• We actively promote recycling both internally and amongst our customers and suppliers.
• We strongly encourage recycling in our offices and when out on-site visits. We use signage in our office, rubbish separation and regularly encourage our team to recycle.
• Our proactive approach to recycling has vastly reduced the amount of waste we send to landfill.
• Our team have been provided with durable water bottles and we don’t allow the use of single use plastic items.

Actively Reducing our Carbon Footprint

We minimise toxic emissions through the selection of our company vehicles. – We’ve recently migrated our fleet to using hybrid vehicles to reduce our carbon footprint.

Reducing Travel

We avoid travelling – We avoid physically travelling to meetings where alternatives such as teleconferencing or video conferencing are available and practical.

We are a fully remote team – All our team have the option of working from home or the office, full-time, never or on a hybrid basis as they choose. This avoids needless commutes, boosts job satisfaction, and reduces our carbon footprint.

Remote working software – We use Microsoft Teams collaborative software to enable seamless teamwork across our entire team.

Team activities – We give consideration to our environment when planning team building activities, for example, do we need to travel far?

Reducing our Consumption – Paperless Working

We operate a paper free policy internally and with our customers as much as possible.

• We avoid printing documents out where possible.
• We type out notes instead of using a pen and paper.
• We use modern technology such as transcription apps to avoid taking notes using a pen and paper.
• Our writers are equipped with a Dictaphone to capture speech and transcribe into text.
• We record Teams calls and transcribe them.
• We avoid using business cards wherever possible.
• Future innovations – We’re planning to use QR codes to send people to a web page with information, instead of sending them a printout.

Our Laptops for Schools Initiative

We are strong advocates for a circular economy that extends the usable life of everyday items, rather than simply sending to landfill. As such, we partnered with the BBC to launch our “Laptops for Schools” initiative. This scheme collects old laptops from businesses, securely destroys their information, issuing a destruction certificate and then refurbishes them. The laptops are then freely distributed to local schools and charities. Our technical team permanently work on this project and it is seen as an active part of our BAU commitments.

ITVET Have an Appointed Energy Ambassador

We have a dedicated energy ambassador within our company. Their job is to evaluate our energy bills and identify the devices that consume the heaviest volumes of power. He then does research and puts in place measures to actively reduce our consumption.

As part of his deep analysis, we recently reduced the regularity of our rubbish collections to reduce the amount of carbon emissions needed by the bin lorries.

We Reduce our Offices’ Energy Consumptions Using Smart Buildings Iot Technology

Sustainability underpins every aspect of ITVET. We specialise in smart building energy efficiency. We believe the ascension of technology can make a positive difference to our environment. This is why we have retrofitted our ITVET office using IoT sensors to transform it into an energy efficient smart building by introducing a range of IoT features.

These IoT smart sensor devices are fitted to:

• Air conditioners, making them smart by sensing if some-one is actually in the room before turning on.
• Each radiator, enabling people to control the temperature in their own immediate environment to make them comfortable.
• Lights to sense if people are in the room.
• We have also added them to our bins to see if they are full and need emptying

ITVET as Industry Influencers for Our Environment

Our Environmental commitments are BAU for every member of our company. Our commitment to our environment is woven into the DNA of our company and affects all of our working processes. Every time we write an article, we always make a point about how the subject links to our environment. We want to be seen as industry influencers where our environment is concerned.

Local Purchasing

It is our preference that where possible we purchase products and services from local suppliers. However, consideration must be given to the whole supply chain including price, sustainability, quality, and suitability of the product. We aim for 10% of our purchasing to be made through suppliers local to our head office in Bishop’s Stortford. We consider local to be a 20-mile radius of the office.

Virtual Office Stewardship

Much of our work as a company is conducted in a virtual setting. When working in a remote and virtual environment, we want to reduce our environmental footprint.

Energy Saving

Teammates should use energy-saving features on devices. Set your devices to standby mode automatically, reduce display brightness as low as possible, and switch off computers as soon as your workday is over.

Electronic Waste Disposal

We operate a circular economy whereby all electronic products are reused or donated, rather than disposed of, where possible. However all e-waste that is end-of-life should be disposed of safely. We have a process for disposing of e-waste responsibly as a business in line with our legal and regulatory requirements. In the first instance, please raise a ticket for the Infrastructure team.

Paper Use & Recycling

As a reminder, we operate a paperless office and this should be extended to all remote working locations too. Any paper or other recyclable products that are used should be recycled correctly. We opt to use software rather than physical products where possible, such as to take notes and organise calendars.

Further Guidance

Teammates can reduce energy usage further when working from home by following some of the guidance outlined here, such as guidance on heating and food bills.