VIQU’s Green Journey Continues

I am excited to share another update on VIQU’s evolving green journey. In the last 3 years, we’ve been successfully delivering our green pledge, in support of the Sustainable Development Goal – ‘Climate Action’, and I’m delighted to now reveal our latest green plans for 2025 and beyond.

As a pledging member of Support The Goals since 2022, we look to publicly support a number of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in alignment with the initiative’s auditing criteria. This ensures that we stay on track and committed to contributing to our chosen sustainable development goals.

I previously have written about the power of SMEs and how although VIQU’s contributions are small, they contribute to a movement which has a significant green impact. In my last update, I set out how we had instructed a local Sustainability Consultancy to determine VIQU’s carbon footprint and support us in creating a plan to combat our current emissions and have a positive impact on the environment year-on-year. Our pledges were:

• By the end of 2022 – to become carbon net zero
• By the end of 2023 – to become carbon negative
• By the end of 2024 – to produce our own renewable energy

A 3 year green journey

As IT recruiters, we understand how advances in tech can have a huge impact, improving our society, businesses, and individual lives. However, we’re aware that being involved in the sector means playing a positive part of the conversation around sustainability too.

In the last 3 years, I’m proud to say we have hit our pledges far in advance of the deadline we set each year. We’ve made considerable investments in the planting of hundreds of trees to offset CO2 emissions, in order to take out more CO2 than we contribute. In mid 2023, we took our most significant action yet, investing £25K in the installation of solar panels on the roof of our Birmingham office – 6 months ahead of schedule.

Additionally, we have taken positive steps in other aspects of our business operations:

• Purchased an office building in leafy Edgbaston, Birmingham. Moving to this location means that more team members can use environmentally friendly modes of transport to get to work, as well as not negatively contributing to Birmingham’s Clean Air Zone.
• Ensured our new Birmingham office was environmentally friendly through the installation of state-of-the-art air conditioning units with energy-saving options, low water usage WCs, sensor-activated lights, sustainable office furniture and access to recycling.
• Installed electric vehicle charging points at both of our office locations
• Promoted our Bike-To-Work scheme, with a 25% uptake across our colleagues
• Ensured our cleaning contractors use environmentally friendly cleaning products
• Sat down with new suppliers to the business to present our positive work and to discuss how they can align themselves with our goals and choose their own

VIQU’s future is green

… and I’m not talking about our branding!

As we move closer to 2025, our existing actions will continue to have a positive impact on the environment and we’re excited to see our green journey continue. We plan to audit VIQU’s carbon footprint once again to ensure our current energy consumption aligns with the work we have done, making us consistently carbon negative as a business for the last 2 years.

Based on the savings our solar panels enabled in the last 6 months of 2023, we are forecasting to save approximately £5K on our electricity bill throughout 2024. Therefore, our pledge is use at least 10% of the electricity savings we gain throughout the year to plant more trees! We will partner with a sustainability charity that will support us in maximising the number of trees that can be planted with our donation, restoring biodiversity into our environment.

Additionally, in 2025 our aim is to focus on the area immediately surrounding our Birmingham office. We will work with our gardener to assess the area and make improvements in order to promote natural biodiversity. As part of the assessment, we aim to gain more of an understanding of the types of insects and wildlife that are in abundance around our office, and install 2x bug hotels that are tailored for those types of insects.

Keep your eyes peeled for our next green update!