WestOne Cars has adopted a number of environmentally friendly practices since 2002 and aims to continue to extend and enhance these and other practises throughout our business.
Chief Executive, Andrew Bernard, is committed to ensuring the business activities of WestOne Cars take into consideration the impact on the environment and to the continual review of these activities. In this manner they can be developed and improved to support the company’s environmental policy.
WestOne Cars is fully committed to, and has been accredited with the ISO 14001:2004 - Environmental Management System (EMS) standard.
Environmental awareness and actions taken to protect it is not new to WestOne Cars. Below are some of the areas of environmental focus.
WestOne Green
WestOne Passenger Cars has introduced the Toyota Prius to its fleet of vehicles.
WestOne Passenger Cars has introduced the Toyota Prius to its fleet of vehicles and offers customers the choice of this vehicle under the WestOne Green service. The Prius is a comfortable 4-seater passenger car and has been awarded European Car of the Year 2005 for its revolutionary Hybrid Synergy Drive system; a combination of an electric motor and a petrol engine. As a result the Prius has lower emissions than any other car in its class and is 90% recyclable.
Recycling of Disposable Waste and Printer Cartridges
At our WestOne Cars ServiceCentre in London we recycle all office waste paper and printer cartridges.
Energy Saving
WestOne Cars has adopted and placed Carbon Trust Energy Saving posters throughout our office. Each poster identifies steps that can be taken within an office environment to significantly reduce energy wastage.
WestOne Cars recognises that e-mail is environmentally friendly and sending information by e-mail doesn’t use paper or ink and uses little energy. Where possible, WestOne Cars employees are encouraged to use email to reduce the need for paper copies being sent to our customers.
WestOne Cars has an ongoing programme of contacting our customers in an effort to obtain email addresses of key contacts.
The emails are held on the company’s database and are used to advise customers of key initiatives, thus negating the need for paper based communications. We currently use this approach to contact over 25% of our customers and will continue to capture email addresses.
We have researched the possibility of introducing electronic invoicing and giving our customers the ability to view OnLine the status of their accounts with WestOne Passenger Cars, again in a bid to reduce the amount of paper we consume and send out per year. We are looking to introduce this e-billing system late 2006.
Website
WestOne Cars OnLine is our web based passenger car job booking, tracking and reporting system.
Our system enables customers to apply for an account, book jobs, track the real time map position of the driver and vehicle via CarLocator, view and download comprehensive activity reports and download all of our literature and brochures in a PDF format. Each of these facilities significantly reduces the consumption of paper, inks and reduces emissions, both by WestOne Cars and our customers.
We are constantly planning further enhancements for the website that will increase further the number of electronic facilities offered by WestOne Cars.
Purchasing
We are keen to purchase and to print any brochures/collaterals on paper that is either recycled or that is accredited as being from stock that adheres to strict controls over waste water quality and air pollution during manufacture. We will continue to identify opportunities to purchase environmentally friendly paper and stationery.