Monday 22 April marks World Earth Day 2024. Since 1970, Earth Day has become the largest civic event on the planet, engaging billions of people across 192 countries to safeguard our planet and secure a brighter future.
At Access we take our social and environmental responsibilities seriously and are committed to integrating sustainability into our everyday business operations. This year we are taking the opportunity to benchmark the success of our environmental initiatives across the Group and refocus our efforts for the year ahead.
Access Chief Financial Officer, Rob Binns is leading the charge. He has used the occasion to reach out to the company’s almost 7,000 people worldwide, to encourage everyone to consider their behaviours as part of the global effort to make a difference and to use their giving-back days on environmental initiatives.
Access Group executive management team using their Giving Back Days to clean up a local canal
Rob commented:
“Building a sustainable future is no longer solely the concern of environmentalists; it’s our responsibility. We are increasingly seeing the worst impacts of climate change, including extreme weather conditions such as floods, fire, and droughts. This is not a legacy we want to leave for the next generation.
Collectively, we can all foster a greener, more sustainable future by adopting sustainable practices that mitigate environmental risk and create new opportunities for growth and development.
As a global business we need everyone's help to reduce our carbon footprint—it’s not something that can be done in isolation, but collectively as a company of almost 7000 people we can make a difference.”
Access Chief Financial Officer, on Living Roof at Loughborough Headquarters
Through our regular staff surveys, we know that our people support our green agenda, are keen to do more, and set more ambitious organisational targets.
As such, we have established a framework across the Group’s disciplines and geographies to keep us accountable, set goals, monitor progress and keep our sustainability initiatives on track.
Last year, we established an ESG Steering Committee, a leadership team of personally committed individuals to lead the charge. We have appointed a Director of Sustainability, Carla Matthews, a key appointment to drive our efforts forward to raise awareness, improve understanding and increase engagement.
As a business, we are committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Although it is mandatory for us to report on our Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions, we decided to report on the Group’s entire value chain as, most often, the largest part of the carbon footprint sits within Scope 3, which is companies’ indirect carbon emissions.
Across the globe, our endeavours are more advanced in some geographies than others; however, our environmental initiatives are an increasing priority everywhere.
Looking forward, our energy consumption will be a significant focus, as will, where possible, switching to 100% renewable energy at all our offices and data centres. At Access, 98% of our data centre energy is from renewable sources, and we also support our customers through cloud hosting services with its built-in carbon calculator.
Companywide, we encourage responsible travel and encourage employees to use virtual meeting options and remote work practices. When travel is necessary, we encourage public transport, car-pooling and indeed 81% of cars in the Access fleet are electric.
In our Global Operation Centres, sustainability is designed into the built environment. For example, our Loughborough office is BREAAM certified, with 300 solar panels, smart lighting, movement sensors, LED lights, recycling facilities, managed water usage, a living roof and a wildflower meadow.
In Romania, in line with our commitment to our Corporate Sustainability Agenda, our Timișoara colleagues gathered with friends and family. Together, they laid the first roots of the Access Forest by planting 1000 trees!
Colleagues in Romania planting 1000 trees in the first Access Forest
The first three trees were planted earlier by Access’ Caroline Fanning - Chief Employee Success Officer, Terry Taylor - Chief Operating Officer and Radu Giju - Managing Director of our Romania office. It’s a great example of how much we can do by working together towards a greater, greener planet!
Moving forward, our priorities are to reduce our carbon emissions, initially by focusing on increasing the amount of renewable energy, reducing consumption and waste, reducing unnecessary business travel and starting to engage with our suppliers regarding their commitments to reduce their carbon emissions.
As we grow and acquire businesses into our portfolio, our global office footprint will increase. That is why we also report against intensity targets using revenue and headcount. This enables us to expand while tracking the progress of our carbon reduction programme.
We continue to work with a leading sustainability platform, whose platform we use to track and report on our carbon emissions, to set science-based targets which can be validated and will provide a clearly defined pathway to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, helping prevent the worst impacts of climate change and future-proof business growth.
We have made significant strides in our ambition to do more for the environment, for our people and partners worldwide, and will continue prioritise the wellbeing of our people and our planet.