Pico Technology has long since tried to be environmentally friendly, but with the more recent IPCC and UN reports, it became obvious much more needed to be done. Taking the science, the threat of climate change and environmental biodiversity loss into account, we feel that it is more important than ever to act.
With this in mind we have created an internal group called Pico Planet.
The group is cross department and consists of volunteers with experience and know-how in going green. With the help of this group, we have set the following target; to become carbon neutral by 2030. We take this work very seriously and hope to become a blueprint that other businesses can follow.
The company will be monitoring, not just CO2 emissions (from business travel, energy usage in our buildings and the way our employees travel to work), but our water usage and waste management.
We will also be looking at how our products work, with a view to improve their efficiency and the materials used in their construction, as well as working towards recycling and reconditioning old products into new.
By doing this we’re aiming to decrease our company’s carbon footprint and encourage our employees to do the same, increase our competitive advantage and prepare for the inevitable government regulations.
Moving forwards, we hope to develop ties with other local companies and organisations to create a movement of change; bringing every business’ environmental responsibilities to the forefront of the decision-making process.
We are working on improving our products’ energy consumption during use. This will be beneficial for the environment as well as for our users.
We have also created a concept that we call “Thursdays for the future” where we aim to reduce our car park space requirements by 50%. This can be achieved by staff using one of the following methods:
We hope for this to become a weekly event by end of 2020
During 2018, Pico was planning to start work on building a new Global HQ just outside of Cambridge in the UK. However, with more and more focus on the environment and, of course, with 50% of global emissions being due to our built environment, we took the decision to grow our business by using a unit that became vacant next to our current HQ in St. Neots, Cambridgeshire. By doing this, we use the embedded emissions of a current building as well as the opportunity to vastly improve the insulation and efficiency of our current HQ.
We have added a tree planting/conservation charity to our list of charities that we donate to.