Ellie Riddle, Our Sustainability Analyst, explains how we are working to improve energy efficiency and retrofit programmes that align with our Sustainability Development Framework, including introducing initiatives such as our recent switch-off weekend.
Ellie Riddle joined Lucy Group in October 2021, joining Greg Fenton to form our Sustainability team. Her role focuses on environmental sustainability projects within the Planet pillar of our Sustainability framework.
Find out more about our People, Planet and Progress pillars.
Carbon Accounting System
Ellie has successfully helped many of our businesses pass their Carbon Reduce audits, “The project involved supporting nominated Sustainability Champions to adopt new methods of reporting carbon emissions and participate in carbon management training.” Ellie will be working with the remaining sites to verify their data collection methods and carbon emission figures in accordance with ISO 14046, and in line with our Planet pillar.
To ensure our businesses track their energy usage, all sites record their monthly activities using our carbon accounting system, e-manage. Data monitoring includes business mileage, diesel consumption, and energy use. “The unit for each emissions source is converted to a single unit to allow comparability (tonnes of CO2 equivalent, tCO2e). The total energy (electricity) consumption across the Group can then be isolated from our total emissions and interpreted for trends, patterns, variations, and anomalies over time.” The information pulled from the carbon accounting system allows us to translate our climate impact and facilitate informed decision-making as the world races to net zero.
Switch-Off Weekend
In order to improve the energy usage within our businesses, our Sustainability team carried out a switch-off weekend at the Lucy Group Oxford office between 28th – 31st October 2022, switching off all non-essential electronic equipment. “We unplugged all of the equipment such as monitors, printers, microwaves, and coffee machines. Over this weekend, we reduced the office’s electricity consumption by 15% compared to the average consumption of prior weekends.”
To support this and continue improving our energy efficiency usage, Ellie is working on communication strategies around the office, giving guidance on which appliances to switch off and when.
Our Future
Having achieved Carbon Reduce certification across our businesses, we are now setting appropriate emission reduction targets in line with limiting global warming to a 1.5C rise. Ellie continues, “Innovating solutions to support these targets will become a priority for Lucy Group and its operating businesses, such as improved energy efficiency and retrofit programs.”
In addition to environmental solutions, the other two pillars under our Sustainability Development Framework, People and Progress, will continue to be addressed, “These initiatives will support our sustainability priorities by focusing on our people and local communities, lower carbon operational practices, and offering of sustainable products. For example, improved employee health and wellbeing and carbon content assessments of our products.”
CSR Volunteer Champion
In addition, to her day-to-day tasks as a Sustainability Analyst, Ellie volunteers as the CSR champion in our Oxford office. We have CSR champions at each business site across the globe who work within their local communities to support, donate and volunteer for important initiatives.
This has been a rewarding part of her role, and Ellie explains that her favourite initiative so far was the Spring photography competition in support of Wild Oxfordshire, a local biodiversity charity. “Our prizes were sourced from local Oxfordshire businesses, so the competition really encapsulated the essence of supporting the local community while encouraging staff to spend time outdoors. “
CSR and Sustainability go hand in hand, ensuring our businesses support good causes, actively improve environmental performance and promote the development of our teams, mapping them directly to the United Nations SDGs we contribute towards.
We look forward to continually improving our energy usage as we monitor and reduce the emissions generated within our business, aligning with our Planet pillar while working toward addressing the requirements of our People and Progress pillars.
