01732 759725 40 VOX POP Both COP26 and the global pandemic have increased environmental awareness, causing more people to pay more attention to climate change. It’s clear that if we are to limit the most damaging impacts of climate change, the direction of travel is firmly towards net zero Here, some of the channel’s leading vendors discuss the need to cut GHG emissions and why strong environmental performance matters to both customers and employees alike Committed to a sustainable future: part one Andy Ratcliffe, Managing Director, Key Digital: “Our main objective is to be carbon negative across our entire business operations while continuing to place carbon negative programmes into our clients. “We have made great progress over the last 18 months to reduce our road miles thanks to increased remote ticket fixes, more effective route planning and localised preventative maintenance for engineers – we have even begun trialling augmented reality hardware support. We made these changes in an active effort to reduce our carbon footprint unsure of the impact in service, but we actually found our levels of service improving as a result.” Martin Roberts, Managing Director, Neuways: “It has always been our objective to be as sustainable as possible at all times as a business. That is primarily through minimising the use of our electricity. We are realistic, as an SME, about what we can actually do to improve our environmental footprint in a way that is both practical and sensible for us. “One of these ways is not printing unless absolutely necessary. For example, all of our accounting is done electronically, we stopped printing and sending out invoices in 2016, as we digitised our account functions. We make the most of the functionality of our IT systems, which has a positive impact on our ability to be sustainable. “When it comes to refreshing our internal technology, we value the environmental rating that the equipment has, as much as anything else. Of course, where we can, we will use cloud-based systems and services. While we are aware that data centres are huge users of electricity, primarily for the air conditioning and electricity used to power the large servers, but on balance it is a better use of the resource than us trying to do it ourselves. We also encourage our customers to use the cloud, not only for their business, but as it helps them with lower running costs in terms of electricity. The cloud is the most sustainable way to use computing power by using a shared environment. “Additionally, we have taken the practical step of installing solar panels on the roof of our office. This helps to contribute towards our electricity usage.” continued... PrintIT Reseller: What are the main objectives and targets of your sustainability strategy, and what progress has been made in meeting your goals? Andy Ratcliffe
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