Sustainability

Our responsibility.

We believe all businesses have a responsibility to reduce their environmental footprint, waste, and improve sustainability.

At Anorak Cat we endeavour to make environmentally responsible decisions that protect and support the environment community around us.

Our vision is to leave the world a better place than we found it; for now and for our children in the future.

We need to be realistic and honest about our business and industry. In 2017, 90% of servers around the world (that are used to host websites) were reported to be powered by fossil fuels (Amend, 2017). Amend also calculated that “an average website with 10,000 page views per month could be responsible for emitting up to 4,700 lbs of CO2, equivalent to driving a car for over 5,000 miles.”.

With an ever-increasing demand for websites, these numbers will accelerate which is bad news for the environment. It’s a massive issue for the technology industry.

However, the scale of the issue doesn’t mean we should shy away from attempting to do our part to make things better, at the very least we must attempt to offset some of this damage.

Become aware. Take action.

Businesses, like ours, need to stop pretending that taking responsibility for the environment doesn’t apply to us and start to explore how we can make our practices more sustainable. Sustainability needs to be a conversation and an implemented policy, however embarrassing or shameful the starting point. It’s a big mountain, but we need to start climbing.

We’ve been researching. There’s a lot we can do to help and we do want to say “yes” to every eco-friendly option available.

At the moment, it is not realistic for us to say “yes” to all that can be done and we will have to show discernment and compromise, but compromise is not settling or acceptance, it is a conscious and difficult business decision.

We are however aware of what needs to be done and will continue with our desire to move towards more sustainable practices, making plans over time for changes to happen. We’re learning and growing and hope you’ll join us and support us in this journey and understand that we might make mistakes and not always get it right. If you notice something and have helpful advice as to how we can do it better please let us know – [email protected]

Link to Jack Amend’s 2017 article on Forbes.com

Our vision.

Our vision as we grow our business is to operate and serve our clients to an exceptional standard whilst:

Protecting our environment

Supporting our local community

We are helping to protect our environment by:

Reducing energy waste by turning off any electrical equipment not currently in use.
Only printing if necessary.
Using recycled paper or card to print onto wherever possible.
Recycling any paper we do use, or receive.
Reducing carbon emissions by the whole team working from home.
Reducing travel by holding meetings online where possible.
Using public transport as much as possible to attend meetings and events.
Contracts and paperwork are completed online.
Using online diaries rather than paper.
Using eco-friendly cleaning products to clean the office.
Using recycled paper for packaging.
Using refillable containers for all drinks – including when we are out of the office.
Only having one car between us.
Sustainable web design. The terms ‘going paperless’ and being ‘eco-friendly’ often go hand in hand, however, it’s not quite a simple as that. Servers that store files require power 24 hours a day, so we have extended our focus onto the design and build of our websites to help make the design itself more eco-friendly. This includes efficient running, optimising page load times (which equate to less processing power), and creating user friendly and responsive designs to ensure visitors get what they need quickly and efficiently.

We are helping to support our local community by:

Striving to use local freelancers to support our projects. For example, branding experts, photographers, copywriters, etc.
Endeavouring to use local independent businesses to provide services where possible. For example, cleaning, printing.
Making special offers available to local businesses.
Setting aside at least 25 hours per year to create websites, or offer our support, free of charge for local charities.
Aiming to source and buy resources from local businesses.

Next steps...

Ultimately, we aim to replace the words like ‘endeavour’ and ‘strive’ and to ‘always’.

Identified Challenges.

Some services that are more eco-friendly aren’t quite up to scratch at the moment, and we are desperate not to compromise the quality of our customer service provision as we pride ourselves on the exceptional relationships we have with our clients, based on trust and service excellence.

Locating a server company that can provide a high level of carbon offset and eco-friendly power solutions without us compromising service and website speed would be ideal.

Come back soon for an update!