To move closer to our ambitious goal of becoming Carbon Positive by 2030, we have been working to understand our current position and setting realistic goals to become a more sustainable business. This has included monitoring energy consumption in our offices, reducing our emissions from the goods and services used by Maximus, as well as our travel and commute to work.
Over the last year we have made significant progress, achieving an 18% emissions reduction against our 2022 baseline by implementing a range of projects.
We’ve successfully maintained our ISO 14001 accreditation, the standard for environmental management systems, with the 2023 surveillance audit raising no non-conformances or improvement opportunities.
As part of our Green Property Strategy to achieve energy efficient workspaces, we’ve made enhancements to our existing sites, including the introduction of LED lighting with motion sensors across a number of sites within our employability division, saving 11 tonnes of CO2e in just one year.
We’ve also implemented a policy to substitute all our office consumables with sustainable and environmentally-friendly alternatives, and eliminated single-use plastics from all of our operations.
Significantly, we’ve switched all directly-controlled energy contracts to green energy contracts (UK Renewable 100%) thereby achieving zero emissions at those sites – a saving of 84 tonnes of Carbon.
A cross-business commitment
For our plans to be achieved, it’s important to engage all of our colleagues on the role they can play to achieve our Carbon Positive goals and be an advocate for change. To support our aims, we’ve developed an employee engagement plan in conjunction with our colleague forums, which has seen success through a high response rate to our annual Working from Home, Employee and Commuting Emissions survey.
Engagement has been supported through our dedicated colleague network, MaxGreen, which now has more than 130 members throughout the business, supporting and challenging our leadership to deliver on our ambitious commitments.
Throughout 2023 we have continually improved our emissions data quality to produce more accurate emissions figures. These mechanisms are in line with our commitment to be Carbon Positive by 2030 and reinforce our green credentials in the marketplace by being transparent, credible, and consistent.
In 2024 we aim to implement further measures, such as the introduction of a metering and monitoring programme within office spaces, a sustainable site certification scheme, a sustainable procurement policy to minimise any negative environment impacts associated with our supply chain, and we are looking at implementing a salary sacrifice scheme for electric vehicles.
Gareth Parry, Programme Director for Employability at Maximus, and Executive Sponsor of MaxGreen, said: “I’m inspired by the work that has been undertaken over the last year to reduce emissions across the business, and by MaxGreen’s successes in promoting sustainable behaviours within our workforce.
“This means we’re moving positively towards our goal of becoming Carbon Positive by the end of the decade, and I look forward to further successes in 2024.”
