Environmental Policy
 

As a small business I‑Finity are committed to ensuring the way we operate, the technologies we use, and our procurement process is for the wider benefit that positively impacts our communities, businesses, and the environment with the day-to-day decisions we make.

Within our business we have a focus on our carbon footprint, waste reduction, recycling and social value. We are committed to providing a quality service in a manner that ensures a safe and healthy workplace for our employees and minimises our potential impact on the environment.

We operate in compliance with all relevant environmental legislation and we will strive to use pollution prevention and environmental best practices in all we do.

The below sets out our policies and practises in how we strive for sustainability and environmental responsibility.

 

Our Policy is to:

Increase our efficiency within our office to reduce our carbon footprint:

• Lighting across our building is energy efficient with its use of LED lighting
• There is no use of artificial lighting in the office, surrounded with windows that provides ample natural light.
• Switch off policy – at the end of the working day everything is powered down and turned off. This includes all lighting, heating, and desk equipment from monitors to laptops.
• Heating system is efficiently managed against timing and thermostat settings
• There are no air conditioning units within the office.
• Focus on waste reduction with no plastic and no water coolers.
• Appliances and technical equipment that is purchased from screen monitors, laptops, tablets etc. are all sourced for their energy rating and efficiency.
• Paperless office - discourage printing for internal use, all documentation is handled digital including legal documents that are signed electronically. 
• When paper is required, we source recycled paper
• Old technical equipment where possible is recycled

Promote green travel to the office and for meetings:

• Encourage walk / cycle to work where applicable. With the cycle lanes York provides this makes it easy to travel and secure bikes in the dedicated bike racks that are available with close proximity to the office.
• Our office is located centrally: train station 10-minute walk, bus station 2-minute walk and we have no car parking facilities. One of the key reasons for selecting this office space was to be placed centrally to enable a green commute – walking, electric buses, trains, bike travel all accessible to our employees, customers, suppliers and partners.
• All travel is reviewed including travel for meetings where green options are always explored first if a virtual meeting is not sufficient.
• Promote working from home, use of video conferencing, virtual meetings wherever possible to reduce overall travel where it is not necessary.

Responsible Supply Chain / Local Buying

As an independent business, we take pride in our work and our approach in how we conduct business. One of our core philosophies is to partner with other independents and local suppliers.

We have strong working partnerships with many local providers who in turn work with us when they have customers requiring software solutions.

Where possible our business needs are always sought with local providers, such that our choice of accounting firm and search agency are both also local and independent.

Our procurement processes and the way in which we operate within our communities shows our commitment in demonstrating social value. Our company continues to seek opportunities to support other local communities both nationally and internationally. On an international level we also continue to partner with small, independent businesses where we provide our solutions to help them achieve needs local to their communities.

Commitment to Cloud Technology and aligning with Companies such as Microsoft who are committed to reducing carbon footprint:

• Invest in new technology that offers carbon reduction and remove technology that is no longer viable.
• Invested 100% in Cloud technology – means we have no physical servers, equipment running in our own offices.
• We are a Microsoft Partner as they are committed to developing and deploying technology that helps us reduce our carbon footprint.
• Cloud data centres are up to 93 percent more energy efficient and up to 98 percent more carbon efficient than traditional on-premise operations. Being a cloud hosted technology partner for our customers has been a long-term strategic decision – one that is better for our environment.
• Microsoft continues to test the next gen technologies to nearly double the efficiency of their datacentres. Their datacentres running more efficiently enables us to manage solutions that benefit from their ecosystem.
• We seek technical partnerships and platforms that are responsible and committed to carbon efficiency.

 

Renewable energy for powering the servers

Our partnership with Microsoft and our investment in Microsoft Azure Cloud technology exists because they enable us to deploy cloud technology in an environmentally friendly way.

The transition we have made to Cloud technology provides numerous quantifiable benefits such as:

• increased efficiencies, ease of access, improved capability
• reduced carbon footprint – studies have shown for medium sized companies carbon emission and energy consumption can be reduced by 60-90% and for smaller company’s reduction surpasses 90%.
• data centre efficiencies – cloud technology requires less equipment to monitor systems and manage workflows, this frees up energy that would have typically been used by machines and has reduced the total physical server footprint.
• sustainability – with requiring fewer machines and less hardware requirements it lowers our cooling and space requirements.

I‑Finity remains committed to deploying the very latest technology that enable us to continue being sustainable and responsible in reducing our carbon footprint. By using Azure, we drive the renewable energy economy and keep our own environmental impact low.