Our environmental impact

Our commitment to the planet

Whilst we have taken a number of positive actions, we recognise that there is more we can do and we aim to continue to increase our environmental sustainability and leave a lasting legacy for future generations.

Orbit’s approach to protecting the environment and embedding sustainability is set out under three main themes and is a key component of our Environmental Management Plan.

Reducing our carbon footprint

In order to reduce our carbon footprint, we have been working in close partnership with the Carbon Trust to measure and understand the impact that our business has on the planet.

Through better understanding of our impact we have already been able to take a number of positive actions towards increasing our environmental sustainability. One significant change has been our switch to 100% renewable electricity across all our offices and communal areas and we have now made this a standard requirement in our future procurement of energy.

Our commitment to environmental sustainability has seen us invest to improve the energy efficiency of our homes. Our aim is to ensure that all our homes meet EPC levels A-C as a minimum requirement.

Our ecological resilience to enhance the quality of greenspaces and biodiversity means will be taking significant steps to increase the biodiversity across new developments and our existing communities.

We are committed to ensuring that the green spaces we care for contain a rich biodiversity encouraging nature to grow and prosper as well as a space for our customers to enjoy and improve their wellbeing.

Improving the energy efficiency of our homes

We are committed to building good value, high-quality affordable homes and improving energy efficiency through draft-free, double-glazed windows and doors, installing wall and loft insulation as well as energy-efficient central heating.

We have recently been trialling the ‘Showersave’ product, an environmentally-friendly waste water heat recovery system which can reduce annual water consumption by almost 22,000 litres as well as including underfloor heating, low energy lighting and electric vehicle charging points into our development plans.

Sustainable partnerships

We have recently been working with the Carbon Trust to measure, understand and reduce our carbon footprint across the entirety of our business.

We have also achieved recognition across a number of our green spaces from both the Britain in Bloom awards, and the Royal Horticultural Societies’ Its Your Neighbourhood awards. Many of these awards were as the result of our landscaping teams and our tenants working in partnership to achieve this success.

Our partnership with BALI (British Association of Landscape Industries) ensures that our teams who are responsible for managing our green spaces adhere to the highest quality standards including environmental and ethical implications of the management of our landscapes.

Environmentally friendly ways of working

Putting our Orbit Earth programme into practice and demonstrating that it is everyone’s responsibility has led to a range of employee led environmental projects across our business. This has included the introduction of an online freecycle portal and paperless office teams.

Skype and Teams enabled meetings, agile working and employee car-sharing schemes all continue to make contributions towards reducing the amount of unnecessary business miles travelled.

Across our estates we’re actively creating pollinator-friendly pocket parks, encouraging bee-friendly flower beds and up-cycling hardwood from across our business to make bird boxes and bug hotels. We are also trialling electric grounds maintenance equipment and have installed our first composting bays with a local social enterprise to recycle and reuse green waste back into our estates.

Continual improvements

We are committed to continually improving our environmental performance by setting environmental objectives and targets. We constantly monitor and report our progress, and also listen and engage a wide range of views so that we can strengthen our environmental credentials and continue to make a positive impact on society.

We are also dedicated to operating an overarching environmental management system which aligns to the principles of ISO14001. By implementing appropriate controls designed to limit adverse and promote beneficial environmental impacts, we effectively manage the direct and indirect aspects of our business operation.