Genee Consulting Ltd is the North East hub for the nationally recognised Investors in the Environment (iiE) accreditation scheme, a framework which helps organisations of all types, shapes and sizes identify, measure and reduce their impact on the environment.
Since expanding our team in 2022 and moving into an office space at the start of 2023, Genee sought to practice what we preach and formalise our Environmental Management System (EMS), measure our resource use and create workable action plans to reduce the organisation’s impact on the environment.
In our second year of business, Genee started measuring our resources through waste audits, meter readings and mileage figures, to gain a better understanding of what our impacts are and the measures we can introduce to lessen our environmental impact. Throughout the year, Genee have introduced sustainable alternatives, such as installing solar panels, purchasing an electric company car, and introducing a wormery onsite for food waste.
We’re so pleased that at the end of our first 12 months formally following the iiE framework, we’ve achieved Bronze level accreditation after an audit by the national iiE team. The framework that iiE offers is easy to follow, and anyone from a sustainability beginner to a environmental expert can utilise the iiE tools and resources to establish a really effective EMS within their organisation. For those that need extra guidance, the iiE online platform provides further training, such as their Green Champion course, offering learners foundational knowledge to improve their organisation’s environmental performance.
Genee’s Managing Director, Jo Holmes, said the iiE process was “a really good motivator to take action to reducing our impacts and seeking more sustainable solutions. We’re a small business but the framework is so easily adaptable to all sizes of organisation, so going through this process with Genee didn’t feel over facing or excessive. We really believe in iiE as a tool for organisations to tackle their environmental impacts and are so pleased that we can say we’re accredited!”
Genee is looking forward to further developing our EMS throughout 2024, and working towards our goal of becoming Net Zero by 2030, and achieving BCorp certification. The iiE framework supports Genee with both of these ambitions, providing a useful guide to making the incremental improvements needed to achieve Net Zero, and meeting the sustainability requirements of the BCorp certification process.
By using the iiE framework to establish our EMS and achieving accreditation, we’re now able to demonstrate our environmental commitments and provide our carbon data to our clients to meet their carbon reporting requirements. This process has allowed us to create a solid foundation for future environmental efforts and resource reductions, and supports our continued improvement as an organisation.