Summary
One of the benefits of our system is that using video technology reduces the need for travel, which is a large contributor to the impact on the environment.
Further, IRIS Connect enables users to improve the level of teaching they provide to their students. This in turn is our best tool for protecting the environment. By educating people, we equip them to be able to drive further improvements and change.
Areas to Improve
We acknowledge that there are areas we can improve our environmental sustainability. Over the next year we are focussing on:
- Increasing recycling rates in the office.
- Promoting BYOD use with our customers.
- Minimising air shipping of components and maximising the use of trains.
- Changing our Discovery and Starter Kit cases to be more environmentally friendly and recyclable.
- Offsetting the carbon for our courier service.
- Moving to a green energy provider to supply the office electricity.
- Launching a recycling scheme for old kits so customers are able to return these to us free of charge and they will be responsibly recycled as much as possible.
- Calculating our carbon footprint so we are able to be carbon neutral by 2023.
- Launching a tree planting scheme for each sale that is made.
- We are launching a minimal flying policy for staff for company trips.
Kits and Components
Devices
We have designed our apps so that any customer is able to utilise the option to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), reducing the need to purchase additional devices.
Materials
We are working with our suppliers to reduce the amount of packaging they include on their products, reducing waste.
Supply Chain
IRIS Connect's main suppliers are listed below with links to their environmental policies:
Physical Suppliers
Software/Processing Suppliers
Company Travel
Working from home
We offer all our employees the option for location-flexible working to minimise commuting into the office.
Sales Demonstrations & Training
Our sales and training teams have moved fully online and are able to offer complete demonstrations via video meetings.
In 2019 we conducted 300+ face-to-face demonstrations and 250+ in-person training sessions.
In 2021 we delivered 99% online and will continue to do this in 2022.
How we help our customers’ environmental footprints
Through the use of video technology and sharing via our platform our customers are able to reduce the number of journeys they needed to make.
If we take a conservative* estimate that 1 in every 25 reflections shared saves a physical carbon-emitting journey for a user then in 4 years that's about 9,000 journeys saved (225,000 shares / 25) by using IRIS Connect.
*a group share can be to hundreds of users from multiple organisations
Number of shared reflections
- 2018
- 36812 User shares
- 12706 Group shares
- 2019
- 35088 user shares
- 17413 group shares
- 2020
- 37300 user shares
- 20578 group shares
- 2021
- 53608 user shares
- 10807 group shares
Use of Groups and Rooms
Our system also offers additional online collaboration opportunities via Groups and Rooms.
Both of these features enable online collaboration between users sharing reflections, feedback, ideas and resources without needing to travel.