Telent has announced it has taken a number of practical steps to realise its environmental and sustainability strategy, as it introduces fully electric commercial vehicles to its fleet and acts to phase out single use disposable cups at its office premises across the UK.
Telent has successfully introduced five zero emission Nissan E-NV200 vehicles into its fleet, providing services in London, in support of the Government’s Road-to-Zero initiative and Transport for London’s clean air and carbon footprint targets. Since taking the delivery of the vehicles in April, Telent has already seen the benefit with 10,176 zero emission miles driven and 1995kg CO2 saved. As part of this practical implementation of their strategy, there are five more E-NV200 vans on order for delivery during September and October.
The UK Government launched its Road-to-Zero strategy in 2018 with the aim for at least half of new cars to be ultra-low emission by 2030 and to enable a massive expansion of green infrastructure across the country. The key objectives are to reduce emissions of the UK vehicles already on the road and increase the uptake of zero emission vehicles to help deliver cleaner air and a better environment.
“This follows the company’s ethos and standards for helping to protect the environment and supports our sustainability drive to reduce our carbon footprint and provide a cleaner, brighter future,” said Adam Bench, Telent Fleet Manager.
“Using electric vehicles not only helps the environment, but it has the added benefits of fuel cost savings and a substantially lower CO2 release into the atmosphere. As the market for electric vehicles continues to develop, we look forward to introducing more electric vehicles across our whole fleet.”
It takes on average around eight hours to charge the vehicles and Telent has installed charging points at two of its locations in the East and West of London. Further charging points will be installed to cater for the future vehicles that will join Telent’s fleet.
Telent is also taking steps to help encourage its people to choose hybrid and electric vehicles by introducing measures to ensure a wider range of models are available and the additional costs can be off-set by tax benefits.
Anmarie Landi QEHS Director at Telent commented: “I look forward to us being able to share more about our journey to continually improve our environmental performance. The steps we have taken with our Fleet will help us achieve our objectives to reduce our carbon footprint in practice. As part of this, we have also moved to a 100% green energy procurement policy for our company premises.”
In support of the UK’s global commitment to reduce plastic pollution, Telent has also started its initiative to phase out single use cups across its premises in the UK. The initiative includes removing drinks dispensing machines, providing alternatives and ensuring people use a reusable cup if they want to purchase a hot drink from one of the staff restaurants.
The initiative launched at the staff restaurant at its Warwick headquarters, with notices to employees and visitors to explain the reasons. At Telent’s headquarters alone, this initiative will save close to 70,000 single use cups every year.
Anmarie Landi added: “Helping change people’s behaviours is key to the full realisation of Telent’s commitment to sustainability. Whilst we could see many people were already using reusable cups and glasses, there were still too many people taking the easy or convenient route of a single use cup for their drink choices. We needed to make changes that would help influence a change in that behaviour.”