From the inception of Auva Certification Limited, it was decided that every effort would be made to demonstrate that we believe in what we certify and conduct our business in a manner that always ensures a high quality of service, safety of those around us and taking care of our planet. One of the International Standards we certify businesses to is ISO 14001: Environmental Management Systems. This certification demonstrates that a company’s processes and procedures continue to meet the strict requirements of the International standard. This includes involvement and accountability of top management, complying with national and international environmental law, preventing pollution or having a negative environmental impact, developing and implementing effective environmental controls in line with global standards and developing environmental solutions for the business. It was very important to us that we should lead by example and demonstrate our commitment to the environment.
Head Office Sustainability
Our head office is situated in a newly constructed, high specification and environmentally friendly, building. The construction materials were selected to give a very low U-value, or thermal transmittance and in addition our heating is produced by an on-site lake source heat pump. This is located on a 680-acre working farm which not only provide a beautiful location for us to work but provides the space to host enough solar panels to produce 590 kWh which predominately covers all our electrical needs as well.
We have strict disciplines in place on the use of paper, only printing what is essential, recycling the few ink cartridges we do use, and segregating our waste. One of the initiatives we have in place to lower our carbon footprint is to plant a tree each time we certify a client. We have carefully selected a partner to do this for us and they issue an electronic certificate to our client to demonstrate this has taken place.
Fully Electric Company Cars
We were pleased to have reduced the environmental impact of our office functions, however our biggest impact no doubt comes from the travelling to and from our client’s facilities, with this in mind we developed our scheduling system to prompt us to allocate all audits to the closest suitably qualified auditor available. This reduces the number of miles we must travel each year. We have pledged that all company cars will be replaced over the next three years with hybrids and within five years fully electrical (EV’s). We trialled our first electric vehicle this year and have been very impressed. Obviously due to lockdown, driving has reduced hugely but there have been some essential journeys to site and also commutes to and from the office. To make it more practical and to cut down charging time, we have had a charger installed at the office to increase charging from 2kW per hour to 7kW per hour. This meant the charging time decreased to under 14 hours. We now have two more EV’s on order and aim for them to be charged by renewable energy 90% of the time.
In addition, before we book air travel we first decide if we can use a local auditor, and for meetings we make every effort to hold conference calls rather than meeting in person. If we do need to book a flight, we endeavour to use airlines that offer carbon offset programs and direct routes.
Climate Neutral
One of our sustainability goals was to be the first Certification Body to be Climate Neutral, so we are delighted to have achieved this by an independent authority. This demonstrates our commitment of complete transparency, and as the economy ramps up, and travel opens up again, we are fully committed to maintaining this status. This is also a good opportunity for our certified clients to set as an objective to only use a Climate Neutral Certification Body which could even support them demonstrating a reduction in environmental impacts based upon their own lifecycle assessment of their products and services. A win-win for us, our clients and the environment.
