Here at ICRTouch HQ, we’re always looking for ways that we can invest in making the campus more energy efficient. Colin and the team have always been dedicated to reducing the impact ICRTouch has on the world and over the years, we’ve made significant changes to the way we work.
“As a company that is investing in its future, we feel it is our responsibility to lead from the front and implement renewable energy solutions in the hope that more businesses will follow suit.” – James Johnson, CTO
As a business, we’re working towards being fully carbon neutral by 2025; and hope that you’ll join us on this journey too.
Over the last few years, a lot of changes have been made at ICRTouch HQ to reduce our environmental impact – here’s a quick outline of some of the measures we’ve put in place.
Our rainwater harvesting
tank currently holds
8,801
litres of water
In total, we’ve saved
and used
126,554
litres across the campus
Our solar panels
have generated
kWh of electricity
off-grid
for multiple days each year
Our rainwater harvesting
tank is currently
full
That’s equivalent
to a whopping
pints of beer!
In total, we’ve saved
and used
126,554
litres of rainwater
With our solar panels,
we’ve generated
kWh of electricity
Our rainwater harvesting
tank currently holds
8,801
litres of water
In total, we’ve saved
and used
126,554
litres across the campus
Our solar panels
have generated
kWh of electricity
That means we can run
the ICRTouch HQ
off-grid
for multiple days each year
Our rainwater harvesting
tank currently holds
8,801
litres of water
In total, we’ve saved
and used
126,554
litres across the campus
Our solar panels
have generated
kWh of electricity
That means we can run
the ICRTouch HQ
off-grid
multiple days each year
In alignment with our carbon neutral ambitions, we’ve officially purchased a large piece of land here on the Isle of Wight. The intention is that these 8 acres will be rewilded, regenerating the land back to natural habitats.
Between 400 – 600 trees are to be planted, which could provide an opportunity for the local community and school groups to get involved. Named TouchWood, the space will provide our team the opportunity to immerse themselves in nature and enjoy the natural environment, whilst knowing that we’re dedicated to offsetting our carbon footprint.
To further reduce the amount of electricity that’s being used throughout the campus, we’ve updated the interior lighting at ICRTouch HQ to be automated.
Motion detectors are now in place to control the lighting in the bathrooms, hallways, stairs and walkways throughout the building, resulting in a big reduction in the electricity usage.
Our commitment to becoming carbon neutral and reducing our footprint over the next few years isn’t just a company aim. It extends to our teams, too.
Part of that includes encouraging the team to be more conscious of their impact on the environment and helping them reduce this. We purchased a fleet of Scott eRIDE bikes which are free for the team to use, encouraging them to leave their cars at home.
With powerful Bosch Performance drive units and 500Wh PowerTube batteries, the bikes have multiple modes for use depending on how much help is required!
Thankfully, the Isle of Wight has purpose-built cycle paths that link up conveniently with many of our teams’ homes, so we’re delighted to have seen many people taking up the opportunity to cycle.
In time for the improving weather, we’ve been adding more solar panels to Building 1 at ICRTouch HQ. Added to the original panels, these panels will allow us to offset power against TouchOffice Web and all our other web service products.
Electricity from the panels is now being stored within a series of Tesla Powerwalls; rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. We already have three installed and have another six on order, which will give us a total of 15hours’ use.
Further to our efforts with renewable energy, our new whopping 38,000 litre underground reservoir rainwater tank is now in place. The water in this tank will be collected from our guttering systems and groundwater, reducing the amount we need from the mains supply.
We’ve invested in two brand-new ‘Pod Point’ EV workplace charging stations. This ensures staff and guests are able to charge their electric vehicles on site for free.
We hope this will encourage our teams to follow suit and look at purchasing their own electric vehicles in the future. The Pod Points are powered by our own energy harvested from the solar panels.
Since the install of our solar panels back in 2019, we’ve generated a huge 30MWh of energy. That’s equivalent to 30 tonnes of CO2, which is the same as six passenger cars on the road for one year.
It would also be enough energy to run the whole of the Isle of Wight’s main town, Newport, for approximately 10 minutes.
To help keep our teams hydrated, we have a number of water coolers throughout the office and one of the few single-use plastics we’d been using were cups. To combat this, we switched to disposable cardboard cups without PE or PLA coating. These are fully compostable and each cup will last up to 5 days before being disposed of.
We also purchased two top of the range Evolis printers that print high-quality, full-colour cards. Evolis restricts the use of hazardous substances in the manufacture of their products, in compliance with the European EoHS directive and the ribbon cartridges are recyclable. The new printers have an ultra-efficient sleep mode that uses nearly six times less energy over their lifetime (approx 5 years).
All the lighting in the newly refurbished office space and across the whole campus is now LED, using up to 90% less energy and significantly reducing lighting costs. We’ve also cleaned all the skylights to allow for more natural light to enter the building. All windows are now A++ rated thermal energy efficient glass to radiate and retain heat within the building.
Throughout the year of 2019, we made a substantial effort to go green and minimise our footprint. After assessing what our top negative environmental impacts were, we set about changing them and our efforts were rewarded when we attained the Isle of Wight Chamber of Commerce Green Impact Silver Award.
At the start of 2019, solar panels were installed on the roof of the ICRTouch HQ in Sandown on the Isle of Wight. The move to renewable energy was the next phase in ICRTouch’s sustainable energy strategy, eliminating 5.25 tons of carbon emissions every year, which is the equivalent of planting over 130 trees annually.
“Not only does the installation of solar panels allow us to significantly reduce our carbon footprint, it also provides our customers with increased reliability and security from power failures.” – James Johnson, CTO
51 x 280W solar panels installed on the southwest side of ICRTouch’s HQ, alongside 3 inverters which combined can generate 14.28KW.
Some of the things we’ve implemented to achieve the Green Impact Award and simple things that everyone can consider:
We’ve used
ltrs of rainwater.
