Swindon-based Arval recently received the Green Office award at the 2009 Wiltshire Wildlife Corporate Green awards. The Corporate Green awards recognise, reward and promote environmental best practice in local businesses. Wiltshire Wildlife Trust is a local organisation with two main missions: to rebuild biodiversity across Wiltshire by changing the way people design, manage, and behave in the landscape and to achieve a fundamental shift in people’s behaviour, values and actions so our lifestyles as a whole become more sustainable.

Arval introduced a programme with a number of new initiatives and practices aimed at reducing their carbon footprint and instill a commitment to the environment. Starting with an employee survey and followed by a very efficient communications programme the Group made everyone aware of the environmental polices while also reminding employees of their day-to-day responsibilities with posters and message boards.

After the introduction of a green focus group, the office launched activities to reduce energy and material consumption. As a default, all printers are set to double-sided printing and the staff is able to bring in old computer equipment to recycle. To reduce the impact of travel on the environment, the Group promotes the use of Eurostar, purchased an electric car for all local journeys, implemented a car-pool programme, and gives driver training courses which educates employees on how to drive efficiently and at lower speeds, improving their MPG performance. The Cycle to Work programme even gives employees tax breaks when they purchase bikes and safety equipment for commuting to work.

To guarantee participation and progress towards the goals put in place, Arval’s environmental performance is now directly linked to employee performance reviews and rewards, so if the company isn’t hitting its environmental targets, all staff will be directly affected. With the new and improved practices, the average emissions per employee fell from 3.51 tonnes of CO2 to 3.14 tonnes – a reduction of over 10% against a target of 3.75%.

Danny Clenaghan, Card Development Director at Arval comments,
“We are proud to receive this award which is testament to the ongoing commitment to the environment that runs throughout our organisation and the wide range of initiatives that we have put into place… We recognise that our day-to-day operations can have both a positive and negative impact on the environment and are fully focused on keeping our impact to a minimum. This award is a great endorsement of our environmental programme and provides a great springboard for our future activity.”