How to reduce your environmental impact
14 May 2011 : AASM News
Like it or not, we all have an obligation to the environment and a duty to protect and preserve what we are enjoying for future generations. You cannot fail to have noticed that energy is getting more expensive and is unlikely to ever be significantly cheaper because of finite fossil fuels and the taxation opportunity that also fulfils the green movement's wish to see lower consumption. So we have to use them sparingly. The cynics may choose to disregard this but at AASM we take the environment seriously and I would like to share with you a few simple ways we consider the environment in our day-to-day activities. There may be a few ideas here that you can adopt.
At AASM we religiously turn everything we can off at the plug when we leave each evening. All computers, printers, appliances, etc are all off.
Being a company with clients all over the country there is a degree of travel involved with servicing those clients because a face-to-face meeting cannot be replicated over the internet or phone. Public transport and walking is always the first option. Only if it is not possible or too expensive will a car be used.
We receive a lot of products in boxes. Once these boxes are emptied we re-use them. We do buy packaging but the board that makes our boxes contains about 90% recycled board and only 10% virgin board.
The boxes we buy are self-sealing or have peel and seal strips to reduce the need for lots of packing tape.
All our waste is segregated and recycled wherever possible. The collections are timed to coincide with the bins being full to avoid a vehicle arriving for half full bins. Even the shredded paper from the office is recycled and has been used very successfully in kennels.
We use as many local suppliers as possible to reduce the amount of fuel required to deliver finished products or services to our premises.
AASM’s Subscription Management Service is always looking to provide effective communication to client’s subscribers without printing and sending letters. We also encourage clients to take payments without the need for a form to be completed and posted to us.
Our phone and computer servers are accessed remotely by engineers to avoid site visits. Recent software purchases have been hosted on clouds to remove the need for us to increase our server capacity and power requirements.
We needed to refresh our warehouse equipment so rather than buy new we bought reconditioned machines. They were stripped, rebuilt, repainted and delivered with a warranty too. So not only do they look as good as new, they work as if new but the overall impact on the environment is significantly less than buying new.
The warehouse management system at AASM works with a series of scanners and communicates through a wireless network. This simple but highly effective technology reduces the amount of paper we use.
Broken pallets go hand in hand with a busy warehouse environment and AASM is no different. Our broken pallets are collected and repaired or recycled into other wood products.
We have bricks in the cisterns of the toilets to reduce the amount of water that we use when we flush.
Our hot water is produced by the boiler on demand so there is not a large hot water cylinder needing to be insulated or kept hot. The pipes that lead from the boiler to the radiators and the taps are all lagged and insulated.
Recent refurbishment of the offices allowed us the opportunity to insulate the roof space to improve the working environment and reduce the heating required.
There are plenty of other initiatives we will be using soon to continue to mitigate our environmental impact in all aspects of our day-to-day activity.
If you have any ideas that we could consider please don’t hesitate to call 0845 521 2240 or email me at david.alliston@aasm.co.uk.
