An active commitment to preserving the environment
At Atos Origin, everyone understands that in today’s world it is important to work in harmony with the environment. We are aware that our activities and IT services in general play an important role in people’s day-to-day life around the world and can make a real contribution to creating long-term value to society at large.
Acting responsibly to minimize the environmental impact of our activities
Atos Origin is in the process of rolling-out an Environmental Management System (EMS) – The ISO 14001 Certification Process. In 2009, Atos Origin obtained the environmental certification for its sites in Spain (Madrid & Barcelona), along with all of its sites and data centers in the Netherlands within a time frame of only7 months, namely 20 in total. The process is being progressively rolled out in France, UK and Germany and other countries in 2010.
Assessing the impact of our activities on the environment
In 2009, Atos Origin launched a Global Carbon Footprint Abatement Program (CFAP) at Group’s level to measure and report for the first time our own carbon footprint to the Carbon Disclosure Project. The aim of this programme was to:
In France, we worked together with agencies such as 02 France and ADEME to measure the global carbon footprint of our Aubervilliers data center, Atos Origin being the 1st IT company in France to do so. In the UK, Atos Origin is actively participating within The Carbon Trusts Carbon Management Programme, their flagship 5-step programme towards excellence in carbon management. Both organisations have partnered with AECOM to work through the programme which started in mid 2009 and will run through 2010.
Initiatives to Save Energy through Conservation and Efficiency Improvements
In 2009 we carried out major initiatives, both Global and local, to reduce our overall Carbon footprint.
More than half of our greenhouse gas emissions come from our 50 data centres, which host tens of thousands of servers. So in 2009, the Group implemented the European Code of Conduct on Data Center Energy Efficiency (Green Grid) and we continued actions carried out in 2008 to improve our environmental performance.
The aim of this approach is to make each data center more energy efficient ; to optimize the energy consumption of hosted components by implementing low energy-use solutions, eliminating unnecessary redundant servers, identifying under-employed infrastructure and equipment that remains powered up when not in use, and reducing the number of components through virtualization.
Deploying Sustainable and Green Company Policies Worldwide
During 2009 we developed and finalised a number of global policies concerning sustainability and corporate responsibility.
- Green Travel Policy – This policy strongly encourages employees to use more environmentally-friendly means of transport. It also covers IT resources, such as videoconferencing, telephone conferences, instant messaging and other collaborative working tools.
- “Smart” or Green Fleet Car Policy – The company is actively encouraging drivers to use cars with emissions below 120g/km CO2.
- Global Waste Management policy – A global waste management policy has been created and we expect to implement it worldwide in 2010 in tandem with achieving greater awareness concerning waste amongst our management and employees.