Environmental Policy

Ice aims to help a large number of consumers reduce their own environmental impact.  Ice aims to change consumer behavior by incentivising consumers to make more sustainable purchasing choices. Furthermore we believe that these small actions when undertaken on a large scale will help to bring about a significant reduction in overall UK greenhouse gas emissions.

Direct impacts

Ice is not a traditional retailer. We don’t manufacture products, hold any stock or make product deliveries. So the direct environmental impact of our business is relatively small.

Our direct, day-to-day business activities have little environmental impact at present, and we are taking steps to further limit them, as described below. We make every effort to stay up-to-date with scientific thinking and are committed to working constantly to reduce our carbon emissions whenever possible.

Office energy use

All new computing and office equipment is a minimum of A-rated for energy efficiency and turned off when not in use. Room lights are turned off when rooms are empty and heating and air-conditioning are used only as required. We annually record and offset our office CO2 emissions using high-quality VERs.

Transport

We communicate primarily by electronic channels including email and telephone. When face-to-face meetings are necessary, we select the most efficient transport solution. Car sharing is encouraged and public transport is used whenever practical.

All transport used by Ice is logged and its CO2 emissions offset.

Office waste

We keep printing to a minimum, ensure all paper is recycled or FSC-certified and use both sides before recycling. All empty ink cartridges are recycled. At the end of its useful life, all stationary is disposed of responsibly. We have centralized bins to reduce waste and encourage recycling whenever possible.

Promotional printed material

Ice uses new virtual forms of consumer communication, for example online media, which reduces the need for printed materials and consequently reduces waste production and raw material consumption.

Where point-of-sale and promotional printed material is necessary, it is sustainably sourced. Whenever possible, we produce multi-functional promotional material that can be used to promote Ice in a number of ways, thereby reducing wasted material.

IT and electronics equipment

When purchasing new electronics or IT equipment, we only select products that have an energy efficiency rating of A or above.

Laptops are assigned to any employees who work from more than one location due to their portability and low power consumption. Employees based in one location have access to a network of energy-efficient desktop PCs and monitors.

When technical or systems upgrades are required, Ice makes every effort to upgrade existing hardware. All redundant hardware is disposed of responsibly as required by the WEEE directive.

Carbon footprint

We track the emissions that result from our business activities and report our carbon footprint figure annually, using both the DEFRA greenhouse gas emission guidelines and IPCC emissions factors.

Managing secondary impacts

Ice promotes environmental businesses partnering with these businesses to reward consumers when they purchase environmentally friendly products and services. Because our aim is to increase our partners’ market share, we could be considered partly responsible for any increased environmental impacts of those businesses. To minimise secondary environmental impacts, we ensure that we only direct customers to environmentally superior businesses. To do this we assess all potential partners thoroughly against our partner selection criteria.

Partner Selection Criteria

Our environmental research team assesses the environmental policies and practices of all potential partners. Only partners that meet or exceed our selection criteria are invited to join Ice. Please see Partner Selection Criteria.

Transparency

To maintain our integrity, it is important we are transparent with our customers and explain why partners have been selected. We provide a review of the environmental credentials of each partner, so customers can choose products that reflect their own moral and environmental considerations.

Updating our policy

Ice launched on 1 December 2009 and is a relatively new and growing company. As the company grows our environmental policy will be regularly reviewed and updated to take into account any changes in our business practices. Ice's carbon footprint will form part of our environmental policy and our total carbon footprint value will be published each financial year. Ice’s first carbon footprint value will be published on the Ice website in the middle of 2012 and will detail Ice’s carbon emissions for the 2011-2012 financial year.