Advance Security Puts Best Green Foot Forward

Advance Security has successfully reduced its carbon emissions year-on-year since attaining the ISO 14001 British Standard for Environmental Management in 2008.

Two successive, independent annual audits confirm the company has managed to cut its carbon footprint from 16.93 tonnes to 15.97 tonnes. Implementing simple measures such as installing video and teleconferencing facilities, introducing a paper usage policy and setting up a CSR steering group has helped the security services provider to affirm its position as a proactive industry influencer on environmental and wider corporate social responsibility issues.

Advance Security’s Managing Director, Richard Bailey comments on the company’s commitment to keeping its green credentials intact and calls on the industry to instigate a supply chain reaction:

“Obtaining ISO 14001 is one thing - retaining it is another. Our clients, competitors and peers are all aware of the painstaking process involved in becoming a proud bearer of a British Standards Certificate but, in truth, maintaining and even raising the bar once it’s been set is where the hard work comes in.

“At Advance we even surpassed our own expectations by managing to further reduce our emissions year-on-year in tandem with growing the business. As an upshot of this, our clients are now coming to us to apply the lessons we learned in leading our own organisation on a more environmentally efficient path to help them too benefit from a greener way of working.

“Indeed, clients are becoming increasingly open to collaboration when it comes to trying to establish the best possible security provision with the least cost to the environment. In many cases we’ve set up project teams where client and Advance representatives regularly meet to discuss environmental points. Whether it’s investing in electrical or low emission vehicles, introducing staff suggestion schemes or encouraging procurement to become more inquisitive about suppliers’ environmental policies, having an open forum helps keep the issue front of mind and more importantly makes sure there’s a task team to take any viable ideas forward.

“But while clients are clearly starting to sing from the same hymn sheet the onus is now on us as an industry to move this sentiment further down the supply chain. Not many uniform or IT suppliers, for instance, could produce ISO14001 certification. In the same way that client expectation has to some extent propelled an environmental awakening among our professional peers, we must now apply the same pressures on our suppliers and in turn our suppliers’ suppliers to make sure we’re all working towards the same goal.”