AKJ Add Green to their Orange

With our own Affinity Billing System working hard for many of our clients helping to cut their carbon footprint by enabling ebilling, we thought we would look in house and make what changes we could to make our business as environmentally friendly as it could be.

After a meeting with the Environment Agency (this can arranged through your local Business Link), we started with the small things first by introducing Fair Trade tea, coffee, hot chocolate and sugar to our kitchen and energy saving bulbs where we could. We have a ‘lights off’ policy which requests the last person to leave to ensure all lights are switched out.

We encourage our teams to turn their computers and monitors off each evening before leaving also, instead of leaving them on standby, which helps to cut unnecessary energy waste. We make sure we use recycled lavatory paper, hand towels and paper where we can.

We have introduced a greener policy on paper recycling at our premises which involves easily accessible and identifiable bins around our offices. This has impacted dramatically on how much refuse we produce.

We try to encourage others to tact responsibly by ensuring all our email signatures carry the message:

please consider the environment before printing this email.

We now dispose of our older computers and monitors through a charity which then reconditions the units and sends them abroad to third world countries giving these redundant machines a new lease of life and a chance to help educate others less fortunate than ourselves.

We continue to work alongside new technologies in order to improve communication throughout the company. With the use of sophisticated video conferencing systems we will be able limit the amount of travel required by our staff. Meetings will be much more time and energy efficient as the time travelling and energy used will be cut as personal contact will be enabled through a simple internet connection.

We encourage the use of local suppliers in order to reduce unnecessary travel and to increase local trade. For example, we have fresh fruit delivered to our premises twice a week from a local supplier which is enjoyed by all our staff. We also maintain a travel policy of encouraging public transport via the train system. We believe that this is a more environmentally friendly form of transport and promote this form of travel as and when we can.

We have created an internal focus group aptly named the Green Group which is made up of members of AKJ who wish to have a say in environmental developments within our workplace.

Please click here to view our full Corporate and Social Responsibility Policy.