Sustainability at eukhost
Reducing the damage that human activity causes to the environment is the greatest challenge facing the planet today. At eukhost, we are fully committed to becoming a more sustainable company and to doing so at pace. Our aim is to swiftly minimise our environmental impact and support our clients to achieve similar outcomes.
As the UK’s leading independent hosting solutions experts, we recognise our business contributes towards climate change and understand that we must act quickly to remedy this. Our primary goal is to achieve net-zero carbon emissions as soon as possible and, for this reason, we are striving to implement greener practices across all our operations and supply chain. While we accept we cannot deliver net-zero overnight, our progress has increased momentum and has the full support of our dedicated workforce.
What we have achieved to date
ISO 14001 certified data centres
All of eukhost’s data centres are certified to the international standard, ISO 14001. This standard specifies the requirements that must be met to achieve an effective environmental management system. This certification proves that eukhost has complied with ISO 14001’s environmental performance obligations and that we use our resources and reduce waste with efficiency. To attain certification, we had to evidence that we:
- Select power, cooling, lighting and other infrastructure prudently.
- Use cooling systems that meet ASHRAE thermal guidelines.
- Ensure power and cooling infrastructure is maintained.
- Operate well-designed airflow.
- Conduct daily monitoring of our environments for irregularities and faults.
- Repair faults swiftly.
ISO 50001 accredited and compliant
The ISO 50001 standard commits enterprises to make consistent progress in energy management. eukhost’s accredited and compliant data centres demonstrate our ability to implement, maintain and improve our energy management systems, and shows that we continually improve our energy performance, operating more efficiently and consuming less power.
Examples of where this has been put into practice include the installation of LED lighting and the deployment of advanced cold aisle contained, data centre cooling systems.
SECR, ESOS & REGO
Our data centre operations are compliant with the Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) regulations and we participate in the Energy Saving Opportunities Scheme (ESOS). At the same time, we are committed to obtaining Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin (REGO) certificates for our green energy.
Green Partnerships
We recognise that our environmental impact extends beyond our own processes and is affected by operations across our supply chain. This is why, wherever possible, we aim to develop partnerships with organisations, including our energy providers, whose sustainability goals align with our own.
In addition, to help our customers become more sustainable, we are committed to cutting our carbon footprint and aim to support their environmental ambitions as far as possible. An example of where this has been put into practice is the infrastructure-wide replacement of HDDs with SSDs. Compared to HDDs, SSDs consume half the amount of energy at load and one-eighth at idle, perform faster and last longer. Their lower CO2 emissions and more environmentally friendly materials make them a much greener solution for our customers.
Working More Sustainably
Aside from the important benefit of improving our employee’s work-life balance, our shift towards more flexible and remote working has helped cut our carbon footprint by minimising commuting and downsizing our office space. Indeed, sustainability has driven us to abandon moving to a single location and instead we have occupied two smaller local offices in York and Leeds.
These cut travelling distances for staff and being close to public transport hubs, make it easier to journey by bus or train. At the same time, we have chosen new premises with EPC ratings of A and which use eco-friendly technologies like LED lighting.
Eradicating Paper & Post
Paper communications have been almost eliminated at eukhost. This has reduced our impact on deforestation and the environmental effects of manufacturing and transport.
By shifting to electronic communications, we have been able to reduce CO2 emissions as well: a standard business letter creates around 50g of CO2, while an email’s output is only 4g.
Carbon Offsetting
Together with ESDS, our partner in India, eukhost takes part in Project Green Connect. This scheme seeks to provide Indian farmers, landowners and NGOs with sufficient seeds to plant a billion trees. We have chosen this project not just because of its potential impact on trapping carbon, but also because it can help reverse some of the environmental damage caused by the destruction of the Indian jungle.
This destruction has expanded desert areas, increased flooding and destroyed natural environments. Hopefully, the project will help restore what has been lost, prevent future damage and create a vast and much-needed carbon sink.
Recycling
At eukhost, we seek to recycle as much business waste as possible from our data centres and offices.
Out of date servers undergo certified data cleansing and any reusable components are recycled. A national waste management firm recycles the server boxes.
Sustainable Development
eukhost fully supports the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and we work to align our operations with them at both local and national levels.
eukhost & The Future
Ultimately, eukhost’s aim is for our business to cause no harm to the environment. We are committed to eliminating CO2 emissions, pollution and waste in the future and to offsetting our entire historical carbon footprint.