Our World

Because it’s worth it!

At Cyan, we recognise that business takes a hefty toll on the environment. Over the last few years, working through our ISO14001 accreditation, we've been busy creating a set of policies and goals that will reduce our business' impact as much as possible, whilst encouraging our clients to do the same.

We aim to systematically reduce our carbon footprint as far as possible and then, only as a conclusion to these efforts, offset our remaining footprint with Gold Standard carbon credits. We realise that much of this talk about 'carbon offset' is of limited effect if we don't actively and radically change the way we run our company!

Offsetting with Gold Standard carbon credits means that we can be sure that the offsetting projects we have invested in are sufficiently effective at reducing carbon emissions and indeed are 'additional' – they would not have happened without our funding.

A few interesting facts helped bring it home that a little effort from us can make a difference. We think it will surprise you too.

So, here’s some food for thought:

• Compact fluorescent light bulbs last an enormous 12 times longer than regular light bulbs.
• You could microwave 6 meals with the energy wasted not shutting your computer down overnight.
• In turning your thermostat down 1°C, you could reduce your heating bill by 10%!
• You could boil enough water for 5 cups of tea with the energy you save by recycling 2 glass bottles.
• Fancy quadrupling your running costs? No? Then turn your computers off at the weekend!
• Only 8% of waste is recycled – the rest is dumped in landfill sites.
• Creating a tonne of aluminium cans from raw bauxite takes around 5 times as much energy as producing a tonne of recycled aluminium cans.

¹ p. 1, Greenhouse gases and Waste Management Options, Friends of the Earth Briefing, January 2000
² p. 2, Greenhouse gases and Waste Management Options, Friends of the Earth Briefing, January 2000