Earth Day and Sustainability at 1Spatial
My name is Ben Crowther and I work at 1Spatial managing our Product Documentation and also our Environmental Management System. I’ve been given the privileged task of closing off our blog series in celebration of Earth Day, and what better way to do this than turn attention to the last 12 months here at 1Spatial and mention some of our hopes for the future!
As a member of the Geospatial Community, the natural world is an inspiration underpinning many of our solutions. We are striving to make the world safer, smarter and more sustainable for the future. We believe the answers to achieving these goals are held in data and are passionate about working with our customers to unlock the value of their location data.
In addition to our work externally with customers, I’ve been reflecting on our interaction with the environment and sustainability internally, and the work we’ve been undertaking to help us increase our positive impacts.
Much of this effort can be highlighted in two main areas:
- The formal introduction of an Environmental Management System (EMS)
- An exciting new initiative we call 1Community
In October, our Environmental Management System was officially certificated to ISO 14001:2015 and the whole team have been embracing the new challenges it brings.
It has been a fantastic effort, with collaborative work from all areas of the business. We identified key objectives to strive for and introduced new procedures to make the work we do even more environmentally conscious. We’ve thought of everything from carbon offsetting to replacing our capsule coffee machine with a brand-new bean to cup device. At the beginning of this year we introduced a range of new Objectives for 2020 and are stepping up our efforts to meet, and beat, all of them- watch this space!
If you’ve been keeping up with the blog posts this week, you’ll have seen mention of the “Three Pillars of Sustainability”. The Social aspect is perhaps the most intangible of these three cornerstones of sustainability, but 1Spatial have been focussing on how we can help our local communities and the wellbeing of staff.
1Community is powered by a team of employees from all areas of the business who regularly meet to discuss and formulate new activities. A wide range of initiatives are in the pipeline, and since coming together at the beginning of 2020 the team has been busy; pitching for funding to promote STEM in local schools, organising charity days and planning carbon offsetting solutions- it’s safe to say that it’s been a resounding success. By empowering everyone in the business to contribute to community outreach and charitable ideas we hope to make a real difference to staff and community experiences alike.
Earth Day (or week, if you’re following along with 1Spatial’s series of blogs) is a time to consider your impact on the environment. Internally, over the last few days we’ve had the good fortune to receive some enlightening presentations from our inhouse sustainability experts Mark Bell and John Hartshorn. Fortunately, they’ve also condensed their thoughts into blogs so we can share this insight outside of our own teams! The first, from Mark, was a fascinating exploration of global implications and corporate responsibility, whilst John turned attention to biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and the impact this has on the global economy. If you’ve not read them… do!
Earth Day 2020 – 1Spatial Sustainability Sessions
Nature Risk: Why this is important to the global economy