Ecotech Services has answered the Envirostep questionnaire to determine how good our environmental performance is ranked. Interestingly, although we are aware of the various environmental issues facing our society (and indeed the planet) and we take our environmental protection measures very seriously, our overall ranking was only a mere 34%. This was broken down into an Environmental Performance of 38.5% and an Environmental Management of 32.3%.
Environmental Performance (38.5%)
1. Energy 25.2 %
2. Water 84.8 %
3. Waste 12.1 %
4. Transport 11.7 %
5. Site 38.5 %
Environmental Management (32.3%)
6. Planning 29.4 %
7. Compliance 40.0 %
8. Operations 21.0 %
9. Information 60.0 %
The automated response to the questionnaire gave the following recommendations:
- Transport
- Consider replacing your vehicles with more fuel efficient alternatives
- Find out the rated fuel economy of your light vehicle(s)
- Get your drivers to check tyre pressures monthly
- Site
- Modify your activities or site to make them more compatible
- Find out if your business is compatible with neighbouring land uses
- Find out if you have an inspection regime for your site/facilities
- Planning
- Review reported accidents, incidents & complaints
- Operations
- Develop emergency response procedures
They are all valid suggestions but for transport running our older vehicles is not a particularly important issue since their usage is minimised through the use of courier services, telecommunications, and bicycles. As for accidents, incidents and complaints, they could be divided into human health and safety, and environmental issues. Note that we have not had any accidents, incidents, or complaints to date.
In defence of our low ranking we are would like to think that our environmental ethics are good and our environmental conscience is clear because the actual work that we do – namely minimising the e-waste generation and energy consumption – has a high net environmental benefit.
A spreadsheet of the Envirostep report is filed here.