Member Article

IDT achieves landmark carbon neutral accreditation

Ilkeston-based managed service provider IDT has achieved a significant environmental milestone - a whole two months ahead of schedule.

IDT has been verified with Carbon Neutral + accreditation, which means the company is offsetting 25% more carbon than it is producing.

The landmark marks a sustained, year-long effort by IDT to lessen its carbon footprint. The company has also started the process of changing its vehicle fleet to a complete EV and Plug-in Hybrids. This will be complete in the next six months.

Other environmental work has included investing in the IDT head office, replacing the legacy lighting with up-to- date energy efficient LEDs throughout, as well as the expensive and inefficient electric office heating with air conditioning. IDT has also installed the latest roof insulation technology.

IDT is also educating its staff by doing the simple, important things like turning off lights in rooms that are not used and unused equipment.

Luke Draper, Managing Director of IDT, said: “For IDT, being sustainable is a priority for myself and co-founder James Cartwright, not because of how it is viewed or commercial pressure – but because it’s the right thing to do. Of course, our clients care that we’re carbon neutral. But if they didn’t, we still would be doing this.

“As an IT MSP it’s going to sound silly but we have actually reduced the amount of IT equipment we run and replaced old hardware with newer energy efficient upgrades, having been completely cloud-based for the past three years we ensure our cloud partners who we use share the same ethos as us.

“From a personal point of view I have two young boys and ensuring I am doing everything I can to lessen the impact my business has on our world and set an example for them is really important to me.”

Luke says that IDT’s staff have reacted positively to the initiative.

He added: “This is exactly what we hoped for as we are now classified as a Carbon Neutral + organisation. Working closely with carbonfootprint.com there were many different carbon offsetting projects, but we decided it would be nice to put back into the local area so we this year have backed the UK Tree Planting project and specifically focussed on the East Midlands.

“Now that we have drawn a line in the sand and had it verified where we are today as a business, my plan is to year on year try to reduce and improve our impact on the world around us.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by John Walker .