Archive for August, 2019

Green machines — Team Purely takes part in this year’s Cycle to Work Day

Thursday, August 15th, 2019

THIS MONTH SAW PEOPLE ACROSS THE UK TAKE PART IN CYCLE TO WORK DAY. FIND OUT WHY THIS VERY SPECIAL EVENT HOLDS AN EVEN GREATER MEANING FOR EVERYBODY AT TEAM PURELY. 

Summer is officially in full swing (whenever it doesn’t suddenly decide to chuck-it down), and people all over the country are making the most of the glorious sunshine. So it’s quite a happy coincidence that National Cycle to Work Day took place last week — and perhaps even more fortuitous the good weather held out!

Widely regarded as the UK’s biggest cycling event, this very special day in the calendar sees people up and down the country leave their cars and bus passes at home in favour of a more environmentally friendly way of traveling to work. Around 760,000 people in the UK cycle to work on a regular basis — and while the figures for this year haven’t been released, we can confirm that quite a few members of Team Purely took part!

Karen, Jodie, Andy T, Paul and Managing Director, Andrew Edmondson, all made the commute to work on their bikes for this year’s Cycle to Work Day. Between them, the group covered an incredible 53 miles. That equates to roughly 21.4 kilograms of CO2 emissions had they each made the journey by car.

“The figures aren’t that revealing when you look at them in isolation,” says Andrew. “But after adding up the total number of miles everybody travels within a week, a month — a year even, then it’s quite shocking how much CO2 is emitted simply travelling to work.”

Those who know Andrew best will be aware he’s already an avid cyclist who just over a year ago, completed a 300km cycle from London to Paris in support of Derby Hospitals Charity. But that doesn’t mean he’s expecting everybody to ditch their Micra for Lycra.

“Cycling to work every day isn’t practical for a lot of people,” Andrew explains, “that’s just the reality of things. But that doesn’t mean compromises can’t be made.

“If we can all find ways around our busy schedules to cycle one or two days out of the week, or even walk instead of taking the car or catching the bus to work, then those are small differences being made on a massive scale.

“Making a conscious effort to adjust the way we think about these things, whether that’s how we travel to work or the amount of plastic we use on a daily basis, is a surefire way to affect positive change — both individually and within responsible businesses.”

Globally, about 15% of all man made CO2 comes from cars and public transport — of which the entire concentration has reached unprecedented levels. If we don’t act soon, experts surmise that the effects of CO2 concentration around the world will be irreversible. Of course, there will always be biased opinions in both camps, but regardless of the absolute truth, it’s impossible to deny the beauty and importance of our natural world and the duty we have to sustain it.

As a responsible print company, we’re conscious of the impact that our production processes and methods of operation can have on the environment. That’s why we’ve put measures in place to ensure our carbon footprint remains minimal. Since becoming a certified Carbon Capture Company in 2013, we’ve been actively planting new trees across the UK, helping to mitigate CO2 emissions while creating large areas of new native woodland integral to our wildlife.

We’ve also put tremendous efforts into adopting greener ethics in other areas of our business, from using specific types of paper and inks, to hand-delivering local jobs and group-delivering items as a way of reducing the amount of vehicular travel (sometimes a bike just won’t do it!).

To date, we’ve helped to create over 2,000㎡ of new native woodland and removed more than 75,000kg of Carbon Dioxide — and we’re continuing to increase those numbers on a daily basis.

You can find out more about our Purely Green initiative here

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