Rosy Blue: Carbon footprint
At Rosy Blue, it’s important to minimise the impact of our operations on the environment. We have developed a powerful environmental strategy which is built around energy management and reducing our carbon footprint. This ‘carbon footprint’ measures the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated directly and indirectly by us as an organisation. Rosy Blue mainly measures emissions from its own operational control: all emissions from electricity and steam, waste and water, transport, fuels from employees commuting and business travel. We are also looking to include the emissions from our value chain and the entire lifecycle of our products in our collecting and reporting footprint.
We have embarked on a continuous journey to assess the quality and completeness of our footprinting data to ensure an accurate calculation, as well as to identify key consumption trends and impacts. To guide us throughout this process, we have established a long-term collaboration with UK environmental experts at The Carbon Trust. They’ve helped us set up our environmental management systems and perform massive energy audits in all of our factories. During these, their experts went onsite to review our existing energy policy, strategy and operational plans. All of the collected data was analysed and efficient systems for the collection of carbon footprint data were set up. Furthermore, the cost and environmental impact of the existing systems were calculated and key energy saving opportunities were suggested to us.
Some examples of energy audit findings that have led to carbon reduction measures:
- Educate all employees on the factory’s energy policy
- Improve energy analysis and submetering
- Implement a staff energy awareness campaign
- Review the temperature set points of the air conditioning systems
- Minimise building air infiltration to improve the energy performance of the air conditioning system
- In the medium term-replace the central R22 air conditioning systems in the office and factory
- Upgrade the remaining fluorescent and compact fluorescent lighting to LED with improved controls
- Replace the air compressors with a centralised system
- Improve the control of the extract systems
Rosy Blue’s footprint has been decreasing every year for the better part of a decade now. This is the result of us evaluating our energy efficiency across key sites and assessing the appropriate carbon reduction targets and action plans. Besides this, we also amended the methodology used to calculate the carbon intensity per employee to better reflect the industry’s best practices and communication standards. And it shows - since 2014 our carbon footprint has decreased by more than 50%. This reduction was made possible by implementing three key measures: we reduced the amount of fuels burnt on site and by owned transport (scope 1), we improved our energy efficiency which resulted in reduced electricity consumption (scope 2), and we reduced the amount of business travel (part of scope 3).
We’re proud at how far we’ve come and we believe that our goal to further reduce our emissions in the future is achievable. Carbon neutrality may never be the outcome but to compensate the reduced footprint we do leave behind, our company engages in ambitious environmental projects such as reforestation schemes. By setting achievable and realistic goals, we hope to inspire other companies to follow our lead. So that together, we can make a positive change.
