esure's gone green

A major environmental campaign at esure has helped the company that brought the world pink insurance with Sheilas' Wheels turn green, saving over 2 million sheets of paper and more than doubled its recycling in just one year.

The company is now also one of the first UK car insurers to source all of the energy it uses from renewable sources such as wind, tide and solar power.

esure's campaign which began in September 2007 was run in association with Global Action Plan (GAP), a major environmental charity and sought to change habits among staff at all three of esure's offices, situated in Reigate, Manchester and Glasgow. A group of 40 employee volunteers, known as Environment Champions, measured the environmental impacts of ingrained habits such as ‘comfort printing', leaving computer screens on and throwing away plastic cups after single drinks of water. They then set about persuading their colleagues to change wasteful behaviour.

A year on, following further analysis, GAP's audit of esure's green drive has shown cuts of 29% in paper usage, saving over 2 million sheets of paper annually. This equates to an annual saving of 22 million litres of water, 179 trees and has reduced purchasing costs by £9,862.

Use of water cups and cones has also been slashed throughout the campaign by 118,500 per year following the distribution of reusable water bottles in every office.

esure's recycling rate also more than doubled from 23% to 56% with external contractors segregating all ‘litter bin' waste into its recyclable elements. In the year since the campaign launch this diverted the weight of approximately 8 double decker buses worth of paper and plastic from landfill into recycling schemes.

Huge energy savings resulted from a 50% reduction in the percentage of monitors left on needlessly. The 208,687kWh of electricity esure staff will save annually by switching off office equipment when not in use, equates to enough energy for toasting 12 million slices of bread or making 510 million photocopies.

Adrian Webb, Head of Corporate Communications at esure, said: "It would be easy for an online insurer to think it is environmentally sound because it operates in the relative low-waste world of cyberspace but we wanted to transform the habits of our staff to create a deep-seated green culture. We made substantial changes to our corporate energy buying and recycling but have made the biggest impact by helping staff to recognise and reduce their personal carbon footprint while at work."