Wiltshire Best Kept Village 2025 competition: applications now open
Wiltshire Council is joining forces with its contractor idverde to sponsor CPRE Wiltshire’s Best Kept Village competition for 2025.
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Grounds Maintenance, Landscape Creation, Arboriculture, Sports Surfacing, Parks management, IOS Managing Safely Training, Ecology & Biodiversity, Grass cutting, Horticulture, Street Cleaning, Soft Landscaping, Hard Landscaping
Our Services
idverde provides a wide range of green services, including grounds maintenance, landscape creation, and advice services, to both private and public sectors across the UK.
02 November 2021
idverde Celebrates Becoming Carbon Neutral
As the UK hosts world leaders in Glasgow for the COP26 summit we are pleased to announce that idverde UK has achieved the Carbon Neutral International Standard, certified by One Carbon World, and has been welcomed as a participant into the United Nations Climate Neutral Now Initiative. This means that all idverde services that are delivered to its clients and customers are carbon neutral, covering the direct emissions generated from all business activities undertaken from January 2020 onwards.
We recognise that being carbon neutral in itself is not the solution but we feel that this is a responsible step to take. Aside from the actions we are taking to reduce our carbon footprint, our business activities from yesterday, today and tomorrow will still have an impact on the planet and we believe that it is our responsibility to compensate for those impacts.
As a leading provider of grounds maintenance and landscape construction services, idverde understands the importance of taking care of the environment. Sustainability plays a key role in everything we do, and as part of our Sustainability Strategy, we carefully consider our environmental impact. Our ongoing commitment to tackling climate change includes addressing the ecological emergency and sensitising our entire workforce of 3500 colleagues to both of these crises.
What is Corporate Carbon Neutrality
Carbon neutrality within the context of a private company such as idverde is achieved by first reducing emissions as much as possible each year and then balancing the remaining direct emissions from the organisation’s business activities with carbon reduction or removal activities outside of the organisation’s activity boundary. The balancing is achieved through investment in large scale offsetting projects which address greenhouse gas reductions alongside socio-economic development, mostly in developing countries. As the organisation’s annual emissions are reduced each year, so too is the scale of offsetting required until ultimately all that is left is unavoidable emissions. At this point, the remaining emissions are compensated in line with strict net zero requirements which ensure any further offsetting results in the actual removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
One Carbon World is a carbon neutral not-for-profit organisation and a global resource partner of the Climate Neutral Now Initiative, launched by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Idverde has demonstrated that carbon neutrality has been achieved in accordance with One Carbon World’s Carbon Neutral International Standard.
“I am delighted that we have achieved the Carbon Neutral International Standard through our partnership with One Carbon World. It has certainly been a challenge getting to this point, but it has been an unfaltering priority over the past 18 months to achieve this outcome. While we have made numerous positive changes to our business already, this milestone formally marks the beginning of our journey toward net zero as we now have a far greater understanding of our company carbon footprint.”
- Dominic Knower, Sustainability Programme Manager at idverde
How are we reducing our carbon emissions?
idverde has been taking action to reduce carbon emissions for many years through the adoption and application of new and emerging technology. We first purchased a large quantity of small battery-powered hand tools back in 2009 which we deployed to deliver our services in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Working with the local authority idverde delivered a 56% reduction to service carbon emissions over an eleven-year period between 2009 and 2020. That contract has come full circle, having just been re-awarded to idverde in 2021 for a further 10 years and with substantial investment by idverde from the outset including 12 electric vehicles to support the council in achieving its carbon neutral and net zero targets.
Our current priorities for reducing companywide direct emissions include:
- Continuing to replace our small commercial vehicles with electric alternatives
- Deploying the latest electric 3.5-ton commercial vehicles into our fleet
- Implementing our new company car policy which will transition our car fleet to electric models over the next few years
- Replacing our hand-held equipment such as pedestrian mowers, strimmers, hedge cutters and blowers with battery-powered alternatives
- Deploying large electric-powered equipment into our machinery fleet where feasible
- A commitment to sensitise our 3500 colleagues to the climate crisis and ecological emergency
- Switching our utility energy supply to renewable sources to power our 150+ static facilities and our electric vehicle/machinery fleet
- Trialling alternative fuel solutions for reducing emissions from difficult-to-decarbonise vehicles and machinery
“There is a substantial task ahead in decarbonising our services over the coming years but our commitment to do this is underlined by our participation in the Climate Neutral Now initiative. Through the signing of this pledge, we have committed to continuously measure our emissions, reduce them as much as possible and contribute to offsetting projects along the way. If the world is to successfully deliver on the Paris Agreement, idverde must play its part in following the science and taking every action necessary to support these goals.”
- Chris Pullen, Chief Executive Officer of idverde UK
