At GEN we have spent a considerable amount of money to reduce our ecological footprint significantly and we firmly believe that it is up to businesses and governments to collectively participate in reducing carbon emissions and waste. The ISO14001 standard is only part of the process and we have exceeded all predictions on carbon and energy savings. Here's what we're doing so far:
Renewable Energy
Both our data centres have LG Solar Panels fitted to the roof space that, on a good day generate 23% of the total energy consumed (as of Aug 2015). The remainder is taken up with an Ecotricity Green Tariff meaning that all the power is generated from solar or wind. When we combine this with our energyStar programme and the very latest in HP power management systems and heavy use of virtualisation our data centres operate on as little power as possible to provide the services required. You can see our realtime Datacentre Power usage HERE.
Our backup generators are now configured and running on biodiesel which is sourced locally. The generators are only used in the event of a main power failure, but we test run them on a monthly basis for an hour so the consumption of fuel is really small.
Paperless Office
Has been a long time coming, and like many businesses we used to produce paperwork everywhere, but with a concerted effort we now run a totally paper free office with our investment in paper free options for our customers too. This includes but is not limited to billing which is generated and sent via email and provided via the customer portal. Quotes - sent via email, Project updates - email, support requests - email, and orders yet again via email. None of these changes were easy and many were resisted by staff and of course legal challenges around not having signatures, but all were overcome and from 01/03/2015 we now no longer send paper anywhere which equates to a nett saving in 2016 of 179 reams of A4 paper and 37 rolls of thermal paper.
Building Automation
Both data centres and all offices are now equipped with the very latest automation systems from Leviton that monitor and control lighting and heating based on occupancy patterns. When a room is unused its also unlit and unheated and this has again made a significant reduction in power primarily from heating and cooling savings. In Addition to this we have installed the very latest Fujitsu DC Inverter driving matrix systems allowing heat removed from the datacentre to heat the offices in the winter rather than being pumped outside. This huge re-use of energy combined with the efficiency savings of the DC Inverter system means that our climate control bill has reduced by 62% over the last 12 months even with more equipment and staff.
Waste Recycling
We don't produce a great deal of commercial waste (now that we're paperless) but we do have a fair amount of cardboard, packaging, and obsolete hardware and these are collected and reprocessed by our chosen recycling partners on a regular basis and we receive certification of such.