Supporting the Woodland Trust as part of our sustainable and low carbon business model

Here at COGNICA we are all about documentation. We collect it, review it, structure it, collate and publish the final documentation output to our clients. For the most part this is for Operations and Maintenance manuals, Mechanical and Electrical manuals, Building User Guides, Site Operating Guides, Asset Care Plans and Estate Management Guides etc.

This can involve thousands of pages of documentation for a single project, carefully reviewed and structured into a curated package to meet our clients’ requirements. To date COGNICA have delivered over 6,000 similar such projects. That’s a lot of documents!

In previous eras, before cloud storage was commonplace, it was a standard requirement to print multiple copies of the completed document packages, bind them in glossy folders and ship them to a clients’ site where they would be used by the operations and maintenance teams as required. This represented a huge amount of paper with the obvious environmental impact and here at COGNICA we reflected on this and decided we wanted to change.

Like all RSK Group businesses, at COGNICA we are all striving to support the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. We explored various options for how we could help offset the environmental impact of printing paper manuals and we settled on supporting the Woodland Trust.

The Woodland Trust are a registered charity in the UK operating since 1972 and to date have planted over 50 million new trees, saved 1,172 woods from destruction, and restored 34,000 hectares of ancient woodland so that it will flourish once again.

How do COGNICA support the Woodland Trust?

Simple. Firstly, we encourage all our clients to take digital document package deliveries instead of printed paper packs, and this helps prevent the felling of trees in the first place. However, when our clients do require printed copies of their document packages, we offer them the opportunity to add a voluntary carbon offset amount onto the total of their fees with us. We take that voluntary carbon offset donation and pass this directly to the Woodland Trust who in turn use it to plant more trees and protect more woodlands. In addition, we are also exploring “Volunteer Days” with the Woodland Trust so that throughout the year, our staff can spend a day supporting the planting or restoration activities of the trust to further benefit the environment and build a better future for generations to come.

For more information on the Woodland Trust visit their website www.woodlandtrust.org.uk.

If you’d like to make a donation directly to the Woodland Trust you can easily do so here www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/support-us/give/donations/