Planet Mark
Planet mark is a certification programme that recognises businesses who are committed to sustainability and making a positive impact on the environment. The Programme helps us measure and reduce our carbon emissions, energy and water consumption, travel, and the amount of waste we create. We obtained our Plant Mark Certification in 2018. It is part of A&E’s continued devotion to improving the environment and constantly aiming to be more sustainable.
In order to achieve this certification you have to have shown good practice in sustainability as well as committing to reduce carbon emission by a minimum of 2.5% a year.
Through this certification, we are also able to donate to the Eden project and Cool Earth to help support education on climate change and what people can do to improve the world we live in. Through the certification we are also proud to be protecting an acre of endangered rainforest in Peru.
We encourage and support our employees and company stakeholders to practice sustainable living in order to improve the global effect our company has, as well as individuals have on the environment.
One method in which we strive to make an improvement is to expand our fleet of vehicles to electric cars. We are proud to now have four 100% electric cars, three zero emission Hyundai Ioniq’s and one Tesla.
Considering the nature of our company, we require a large fleet of vehicles for our engineers (we have 27 vans and 2 Toyota Aygo’s). As our engineers are required to spend a great amount of time on the road, we’re continuously striving to help minimise the negative impact on this has on the environment.
Earlier this year we installed ‘Lightfoot’ devices into all of our company vehicles. Lightfoot is a unique, real-time verbal coaching technology that helps drivers understand exactly how they need to drive their vehicles to be both safe and efficient. The devices where installed and set to ‘blind mode’ for several weeks to get an accurate reading of how efficient the engineers were driving. When the devices were switched to ‘Live’ mode the positive results were immediate; there was a 9.8% fuel saving, reductions in speeding by 19.5% and Lightfoot driving penalties fell by 99%!
The devices use real time data from the engine to give drivers feedback on their driving and uses a colour coding technique to help them drive more efficiently.
Employees also have access to the Lightfoot app to show them more detailed feedback on their driving as well as access to exclusive competitions and rewards. These competitions and rewards again encourage our engineers to drive more economically.
Our company goal is to achieve a sustainable overall net positive effect on the environment by 2021. This is something within our reach and a goal everyone is working towards on a daily basis.