Information Services are delighted to have been awarded a platinum award at this year’s Sustainability Awards ceremony. This reflects good practice in taking day to day green initiatives around the office, however, our green initiatives extend much further than this…
The new managed print service that is being implemented throughout the summer will have a significant reduction in our environmental impact. This will be achieved through an increase in the use of double-sided printing, a reduction in accidental printing, and a number of other improvements. Together, these improvements will equate to hundreds of trees saved each year, just in our paper savings.
The service will also improve energy efficiency, by cutting the amount of unnecessary printing and allowing us to monitor energy usage more effectively. The Papercut software introduced as part of the service can report on usage statistics, energy consumption and even the number of trees consumed within a specific period.
New Equipment
We ensure that all new equipment purchased is energy efficient, and that we don’t purchase any equipment we don’t need.
To formalise our commitment in this area of our work, our new CADDI build also has a stated aim to reduce carbon emissions from University computers.
Old Equipment
Inevitably hardware will become out of date, or break, and will need to be replaced. We have comprehensive equipment disposal procedures in place to ensure that unneeded hardware can be handled appropriately, and redeployed where possible. To arrange for hardware disposal, please log a request on ServiceNow at www.city.ac.uk/servicedesk. You will then be contacted to arrange the pickup.
If we can’t use it again, we use a disposal company called EOL to pickup all of our IT waste. They will try to redistribute it to someone with less demanding uses for it, or if that’s not possible they’ll break it down into its key components for recycling. EOL operates a zero-landfill policy, meaning nothing we send to them goes to the rubbish tip. This way we can ensure we waste as little as possible.
Employee Self Service
Sustainability is a key area for Information Services, which is reflected in our projects. A short time ago we released the Employee Self-Service system. This allows payslips and leave requests to be handled digitally on the system, and saves the need for paper copies of a number of different forms.
Digital Communications
We have recently introduced an office messaging system called Skype for Business, known on some systems as Lync. This application allows for text, voice and video communication inside and outside the University. You can share screens, use a digital whiteboard, and even share control of your computer. Using this system, there’s no need for costly or wasteful travel measures, or to print paper copies of documents to bring to a meeting.
More to come…
With all of these environmental measures and more, Information Services is working hard to ensure that City is as sustainable as possible. We continue to release more carbon cutting measures as time goes on, for regular stories on Information Services projects and updates, press the “Subscribe” button at the side of this page. This will subscribe you to the blog, so you’ll be notified whenever we have a new story.
