Net zero. Carbon footprint. Climate change. Greenhouse gases. Low-carbon technology. If someone had said to me when I started my first job that these were critical areas for consideration in the daily operation of the business, I’d have thought they were a bit bonkers to say the least. But they have become essential to how we run our operations, and so they should.

Global warming is the responsibility of everyone and for Zicam, as a supplier and an employer, we’ve had to put in place measures that tackle our contribution to the environment. It’s been a really positive experience. We now have a realistic and robust plan for how we’re going to reduce our carbon footprint to achieve net zero by 2050. We also have clear commitments about how we continue to be a great employer and maintain our social responsibility.

So I thought I’d share them with you.

Zicam’s approach to fighting climate change

As well as in-office schemes like promoting recycling, reducing single-use plastic, and creating a paperless environment, we’ve also examined our fleet, travel and delivery methods and put in mitigation measures.

1. Fleet

An easy one for us was to switch our vehicles from diesel engines. We then offset our carbon emissions by accurately capturing CO₂ levels, planting new woodland in the UK and contributing to afforestation around the world. We’ve also installed on-site electric vehicle (EV) charging points for staff vehicles to make it easy for people wanting to switch to EVs (this is also a new service for us for 2022 – read more here).

2. Travel

We’ve adopted a hybrid working scheme to reduce carbon emissions generated from commuting and have identified high-mileage employees and arranged defensive driving training to increase awareness. Where possible, engineers will work from home closer to their jobs to offset the impact of travel.

3. Delivery

We’ve reduced transit time and double-handling by arranging wherever we can for equipment to be sent directly to site instead of it making a journey to us and then a further journey to site.

That’s our current plan for how our business is going to tackle climate change. Where we can make improvements, we certainly will and we’ll continue to encourage all employees to make suggestions where they think we can change for the better. We also want to be really transparent for our customers, so we’ve made our plan available on our website.

Subscribe here to keep up to date with Zicam’s news and views.