Our commitment to the environment
At Made Open, we care about the environment. We aim to lessen our impact and promote sustainability. We strive to reduce our carbon footprint and continuously seek ways to improve. During our quarterly staff meetings, we review our environmental policy to stay aligned with our social, ethical, and environmental goals.
Offices
- Promote flexible working where possible to give employees the option to work from home, which reduces their carbon emissions produced by travelling to work.
- Minimise our paper consumption by only printing critical documents and digitally distributing as much as we possibly can.
- Market our business digitally rather than printing out publicity documents.
- Only purchase paper and stationary from recycled and sustainable resources.
- Ensure that we reuse paper that’s only been printed on one-side (where not practical, we aim to reduce paper waste by using smaller paper sizes or equivalent digital files).
- Have a scrap paper tray to encourage reuse of scrap paper.
- Recycle all paper, card, plastic and glass.
- Have all our printer and toner cartridges collected for recycling.
- Consider the impact of all the products we purchase; we only buy what’s necessary, we aim to buy fair-trade consumables and we look for products with as little packaging as possible.
- Purchase what we can from local suppliers.
- Evaluate the option of renting or sharing when purchasing new equipment.
- Only use licensed and appropriate organisations to dispose of waste.
- Always look to upgrade to the most energy efficient products when needed.
- We are monitoring our usage of electricity, gas and water but need a combined team effort to maintain low usage figures over the year.
- We are monitoring the number of local suppliers we use and researching the ethical background of these suppliers in terms of their company statements and supply chains.
- We need to assess and define the current ratio of digital to printed publicity, and set targets for improvement.
- We need to buy all of our office supplies from local traders, and from companies that have ethical or environmental policies.
- Have a combined effort policy in sub-tenant contracts with office sharers to promote ethical maintenance and cleaning behaviours across the whole office.
- Use only Ecover branded environmentally friendly cleaning products or similar.
- Install a compost collector and have promoted its use through signage to office sharers.
- Collect some typical non-recyclables in a separate bin and take to a Terracycle collection point.
- Consider posting or travelling further afield to get current non-recyclable waste to smaller companies / organisations that reuse or recycle such material.
- We need all staff to actively make environmental-led choices when planning a business trip to reduce carbon emissions and single use waste.
Online activity
- Choose to host through responsible cloud-based companies and our sites are rated ‘green’ by The Green Web Foundation.
- Advocate for green hosting.
- Share information and resources about environmentally responsible online activity.
- Regularly review our company inboxes and remove any unnecessary emails.
- Regularly review our company cloud-based storage accounts and remove outdated files.
- To offset our unavoidable carbon emissions.
- To challenge online or technology focussed companies who do not rank ‘green’ with The Green Web Foundation to improve their carbon footprint.
- To ensure our platform owners are as passionate about keeping their platform’s carbon footprint small by choosing green hosting, keeping pages small and to consider off-setting their emissions.
- To put processes in place to ensure our equipment is as efficient as possible.
Energy & water
- Monitor our usage of electricity, gas and water.
- Make sure all lights and electrical equipment are switched off when not in use.
- Turn off all computers at the end of the day.
- Make sure that heating is adjusted with energy consumption in mind.
- Make use of the natural light (when sunny).
- Consider the energy consumption and efficiency of any new products we need to purchase, and how investing in new technology could help us save energy.
- Never buy bottled water.
- We need a combined team effort to maintain low usage figures over the year.
- Individuals need to be reminded to turn off electrical equipment at the end of the day.
- We need to maintain reminders of our policy commitments to staff during quarterly staff days.
Employees' home offices
- Make sure all lights and electrical equipment are switched off when not in use.
- Turn off all computers at the end of the day.
- Make sure that heating is adjusted with energy consumption in mind.
- Make use of the natural light (when sunny).
- Conduct the majority of work during hours of strong sunlight.
- Consider the energy consumption and efficiency of any new products we need to purchase, and how investing in new technology could help us save energy.
- Never buy bottled water.
- We need a combined team effort to maintain low usage figures over the year.
- We need to maintain reminders of our policy commitments to staff during quarterly staff days.
Business travel
- Aim to conduct our business meetings at our designated premises or online.
- Commit to reducing our environmental impact by using public transport or cycling to work where possible.
- Promote placing employees on the cycle to work scheme.
- Promote car sharing to and from meetings and events.
- Promote train travel to meetings.
- Commit further to arranging more business meetings digitally where possible, to reduce cars on the road.
- Choose public transport (eg train) to conduct business trips where feasible.
Community participation
- Support a national environmental charity with a large local presence, Surfers Against Sewage, with monthly donations.
- Do regular beach cleans as part of our staff team days.
- Have created opportunities for local people through many of our projects.
- Work on many not-for-profit projects.
- Make more pledges to take action.