Environment

Growing our business by shrinking our footprint 

For an information-led organisation like ours, environmental management is not just about responsibility, it's about efficiency. 

Our operations are the core of our business which is essential to serving the payments community. Through increasing customer demand we are required to use more processing power. Effective environmental control and management allows us to identify efficient solutions and improvements in response to our customer's requirements. 

We were one of the first UK businesses to sign up to the carbon reduction commitment. We share best practice by working closely with the Carbon Trust and as members of the Prince's Mayday network. 

We operate two main and two back-up data centres at four separate locations. All of our operational sites conform to the ISO14001 environmental standard. 

The ISO14001 is an internationally recognised benchmark that demonstrates a clear framework of managing day to day control, measurement, support and audit programmes for our environmental focus and operating structure. 

This accomplishment endorses VocaLink's ongoing commitment to manage impacts successfully, ensuring that our actions have a positive and protective effect on the environment wherever possible. 

We are very proud to be setting a standard of excellence and compliance across our industry. 

It doesn't end there. We're committed to continually minimising our energy consumption. 

In data centres a lot of the focus is on temperature control. We've installed low consumption equipment. We have raised safe operating temperatures by 1 - 2 degrees to avoid expending unnecessary energy on cooling systems. We're now looking at recycling heat and renewable energy sources. 

Facilitating meetings for employees within a large, multi-site operation is a continual challenge. We know it can be more efficient for colleagues to meet face-to-face, but we also want to minimise the environmental impact of such travel and limit our transport costs. We track our travel habits and give travel users feedback on the amount of carbon they use depending on the type of travel. 

So how do you help people collaborate effectively and still go green? 

Technology can be part of the answer. We've installed telepresence equipment at our primary sites. It's working well. Colleagues are finding they can interact, travel time is reduced and we're saving fuel. And our virtualised citrix environment allows us to work remotely, reducing travel whilst enhancing resilience.