Carbon Accounting – Geotechnical Engineering Ltd

Calculating and regularly reviewing your organisation’s carbon footprint is a powerful way of demonstrating how you are managing your environmental impact. A carbon footprint is now a widely understood and accepted metric, with more and more leading businesses disclosing details of their emissions performance. And an organisation’s carbon footprint is increasingly being used to demonstrate more than care for the environment – it’s becoming about business responsibility. In fact, research from Maastricht and Oxford universities has found that one of the best ways to boost investment credibility is to voluntarily publish details of environmental impact.

Sustainable Direction has long been at the forefront of the field of carbon footprinting, with managing director John Henry producing one of the first carbon footprints in the UK back in 1989. Fast forward twenty-five years, and we’re still helping people to understand their impacts, recently with Geotechnical Engineering Ltd (Geotechnical).

Geotechnical was incorporated in 1961 to provide ground investigation services. It is one of the largest privately owned ground investigation contractors in the UK, providing quality data to the construction industry. The company has been based in Gloucester since starting over 55 years ago. Geotechnical has approximately 180 staff, and delivers drilling and other investigation services across the UK and into Europe.

What We Did

Sustainable Direction prepared an update to a carbon survey undertaken for Geotechnical six years ago. Our report used the same structure and metrics as the previous work to allow comparison and continuity of information. Our work also extended beyond the scope of the original work by providing a carbon footprint value for fuel combusted in vehicles and plant, which the previous work did not provide. With the majority of emissions coming from vehicles, this gave a much clearer picture of Geotechnical’s carbon footprint than looking at emissions from the office alone.

Geotechnical provided us with energy bills and fuel card data; we used these and UK Government approved metrics to calculate the overall carbon footprint of the company’s activities, as well as breaking it down by fuel type. The updated footprint showed that Geotechnical has reduced the per-employee carbon footprint of its gas and electricity consumption in the last six years. We also provided a series of recommendations for improving energy efficiency and further reducing its footprint.

Geotechnical said:

“The work that Sustainable Direction carried out for us was exactly what we required. The report they provided will enable us to continue our drive towards becoming a more efficient and sustainable business. We were particularly pleased to collaborate with a company that shares our innovative and responsible attitude to business.”