Reducing our impact on the environment

We are committed to acting in an environmentally responsible manner, ensuring that our impacts are identified and managed effectively, and encouraging continued improvement in our environmental performance.

We maintain an Environmental Management System (EMS). This is certified to the internationally recognised ISO14001 standard of excellence for our Exeter site.

Within Property Management we regularly review progress towards our environmental objectives and targets, and how we can improve our environmental performance. As part of the EMS activities our staff and contractors receive environmental training.

Our headquarters in Exeter has been awarded an ‘Excellent’ BREEAM rating certification by the Building Research Establishment, recognising the environmental attributes of the site, including:

• channelling rain water from around the site, which is then treated and reused to flush the toilets.
• a fully automatic lighting system which responds to occupancy and natural light levels and automatically switches off lights in our meeting rooms once an hour.
• making use of the cool air at night and the heat from the building during the day to heat and cool the building as the seasons and weather dictate.
• producing our own electricity using a combined heat and power plant which also helps us to cool our supercomputers.

Reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions

Energy management is a key component of our environmental strategy. We conduct regular reviews to look at areas where we can reduce impact and make improvements through increased efficiency.

Technology is critical for our work in helping to effectively forecast weather and climate change and we continually investigate ways to reduce the impact of this technology on the environment. We have a target to achieve a like-for-like reduction in energy consumption across the Exeter site which excludes the old and new supercomputers.

Our work to reduce emissions from business and commuter travel include:

• encouraging car sharing, the use of public transport and providing pool bicycles to promote greener transport to and from our Exeter site
• using video and teleconferencing to reduce business travel
• replacing our pool car fleet and commercial vehicles with a more environmentally-friendly diesel fleet — lower in CO2 emissions

We are also continuing to work on reducing the environmental impact ratings arising from the goods and services we purchase.

Reducing waste, increasing recycling

We are continually seeking methods of re-using and recycling waste. We are now recycling more than 72% of waste produced on site, passing our target by 7%.

Initiatives include:

• providing recycling points for materials including paper, vending cups, cans, bottles, ring binders, glass, foil, CDs and DVDs. We also recycle printer cartridges via Cartridges for Charity.
• replacing plastic bottles of drinking water served at meetings with chilled tap water served from reusable glass bottles.
• sending our used paper towels to be recycled into office card, folders and beer mats
• reusing and recycling cardboard boxes and polystyrene used to pack equipment delivered to our building.
• collecting and composting garden waste from our grounds
• raising staff awareness through events, e.g. ‘One bin day’
• food waste produced on site is removed and taken to a local company where it is composted to make a peat-free organic soil improver.

Reducing water consumption

A borehole became operational during the year at our headquarters in Exeter, reducing mains-water consumption by an estimated 21%.