This protocol formalises oomph’s commitment to supporting the principles of environmental sustainability and recognises that a sustainable environment is central to our lives and our work.
oomph is committed to managing its activities to promote environmental sustainability, conserve and enhance our natural resources, prevent environmental pollution and bring about continual improvement in our environmental performance.
The aim of this protocol is to integrate a philosophy of environmental sustainability into all of oomph’s activities and to establish and promote sound environmental practice in our operations. We will achieve this by:
This policy does not form part of any contract of employment or other contract to provide services, and we may amend it at any time.
Every colleague is responsible and the protocol will be reviewed every year. Changes may be made at any time based on guidance or amended priorities.
If you have any questions about this policy, or suggestions for changes or additions to this protocol are welcome please speak to the oomph Life Organiser.
The earth’s environment is under severe stress from uncontrolled human activity, threatening the survival of our society and the performance of oomph’s mission.
oomph respects our relationship with the natural environment and its ecosystems. We acknowledge the adverse impacts that human activity can impose and take actions to prevent degradation of those natural systems. We acknowledge the specific impacts of our business on the natural environment, and our responsibility as a good corporate citizen to ensure a natural environment that is sustainable.
oomph commits to the following principles and practices:
We commit to increasing opportunities for nature to thrive on the assets we own, lease or manage. This includes land, water and air which we have a financial interest in, own, lease, or otherwise manage. We are committed to biodiversity, and will work to ensure our actions on the assets we own or manage do not have a detrimental impact on the natural environment and will support biodiversity.
We will achieve this by:
We encourage the efficient use of water on all assets we own, lease or manage.
We will ensure colleagues and other users of our buildings are aware of how to reduce the use of water, and reuse water wherever possible.
We will promote and support modern working practices including remote working and hybrid working.
We are committed to keeping our waste to an absolute minimum by preventing, reusing, recycling or recovering waste wherever possible. We will ensure waste is sorted, stored and disposed of properly and in a sustainable manner in all of our locations.
We aspire to be a zero-waste organisation. We will achieve this by:
We aspire to reduce our carbon footprint throughout our supply chain. We commit to the principles of buying locally, seasonally, and making a concerted effort in all our procurement decisions to reduce the distance travelled between source and destination.
We commit to timely procurement and encourage less environmentally damaging ways for international procurement needs. When these decisions are made in a timely manner, overland or overseas shipping can be used instead of flights, which reduces the carbon footprint of the procurement spend compared to aviation.
We will meet the objectives of sustainable procurement by:
We will encourage all suppliers to adopt principles of environmental sustainability.
The use of electricity and gas is a key contributor to greenhouse gas emissions; however, oomph cannot function without energy. Therefore, energy is one of the clearest and most important ways to reduce our overall emissions, and is a key part of our commitment to reducing our carbon footprint.
To accomplish a reduction in emissions from energy use, we will:
We will review and produce a plan to reduce our emissions, in line with BCorp accreditation:
Taken together, these efforts to move towards 100% renewable energy use, and to review and reduce our emissions to help us reach net zero emissions by 2030.
We will work towards the use of certified sustainable PCs, laptops, monitors, mobile devices, network and server hardware.
Where possible, we will source IT equipment from recycled sources.
Non-standard IT equipment will not be used unless there is an unavoidable technical requirement precluding this. Non sustainable equipment or equipment with low energy efficiency will only be used where there is no alternative.
All equipment must be disposed of correctly through an approved e-waste recycling contractor. No IT equipment should be sent to landfill or thrown out.
We will make available the use of applications and systems to reduce the need for printing paper and reduce the use of personal printers where they are not required.
We will encourage all colleagues to undergo training on environmental sustainability and climate change. We will aim to raise awareness of environmental sustainability across our operations.
We encourage collaboration and involvement of all colleagues in our environmental sustainability efforts. Colleagues involvement is critical to ensuring the adoption of this protocol and in our efforts to tackle climate change.
We will establish a sustainability steering group to drive involvement and stewardship of sustainability across oomph.
This protocol should also be used in conjunction with the following protocols and procedures: