Our commitment to sustainability
The climate crisis is an acute threat to our modern world, which is why environmental issues are a key consideration for BrightMinded. As an SME, we’re committed to sustainable development as a guiding principle across our work. Our aim is to reduce the impact on the environment from our operations and to ensure our planet’s future is an integral and fundamental part of projects and people we choose to work with.
What we do currently…
We recognise the importance of sustainable business practices and support ventures that reflect these values. We’re always open to new ways of working that minimise our footprint.
Hosting
As a provider of digital services, our single biggest environmental impact is the choice of hosting for our clients. When Amazon Web Services dropped their commitment to using renewable energy in their data centres, we moved away. As a result, all new clients are hosted at DigitalOcean, whose London-based data centres runs on 100% renewable energy.
DigitalOcean’s London data centres use Equinix, who carry the following certifications: LEED Silver, ISO 14001, ISO 45001, ISO 50001
Renewable energy coverage: 100% from Green product through supplier (GoOs and REGOs)
Travel
Our team are based all over the UK, with a focus in Sussex. People can choose to work from home full-time or come into our coworking office space at PLATF9RM, Hove. When we’re working – we utilise tools like Google Meet, Slack, and Google Workspace to keep in touch and share information with partners, consultants and clients. When we do need to travel, we tend to use rail or buses as it’s better for the environment and it also means we can get more coding done.
We have a high-value cycle-to-work scheme, to encourage our team to use sustainable transport.
Community
We support our local community in whatever way we can. We sponsor two tree-planting initiatives in Brighton, including a new community orchard in a local school. The projects we sponsor are maintained by community groups and supported by Brighton Permaculture Trust. This ensures the sustainability of the schemes and means that all the trees planted are cared for to reach maturity.
We have joined the SME Climate Hub, and started the process of becoming for BCorp certified.
Recycling and office waste
As a 100% digital-first business, we generate very little physical waste. We recycle everything we can and operate a 99% paperless office, as everything is stored in the cloud – other than the odd notebook here and there.
Living Wage
We’re a Living Wage employer with a low maximum to minimum wage ratio. This reflects the value we place on all of our people, and our belief that happy team mean happy clients.
Internships and supporting future bright minds
We’ve been connecting with students throughout the University of Sussex offering paid summer internships for four summers in a row. e have run projects with student teams from University of Brighton and the University of Sussex, allowing the students to put their learnings into the context of a real business environment.
We appreciate what fresh minds have to offer to the working world, and love to hear their ideas. Providing young people the ability to get experience and expand their knowledge fulfils us as a company.
We have welcomed several A-level and GCSE students for work experience days and weeks over the past years.
Sustainability and our work
For our development projects we strive to:
- ensure the digital product or service is safe and secure, and avoids tracking user behaviour and collecting data unnecessarily
- follow web standards for both best practice and accessibility and we advise using open-source principles wherever possible
- ensure that the hosting provider selected / recommended, is powered by renewable energy and that they have solid environmental policy in place. Currently we tend to recommend renewable hosting via DigitalOcean from their London datacentre
- ensure that any hosting located as close as possible to the core user base or uses a CDN and that it runs the latest tech stack
- ensure that server-side caching or static technology is in place to minimise server load
We use good design principles
With all of our projects we always try to integrate the following principles to ensure lower server loads and efficiency by considering the following:
- whether the website’s content and design has used colour, imagery and film efficiently and to add genuine value and not just garnish
- whether the UI design used the minimum number of custom fonts
- if the experience respects user privacy and provides clear guidelines for maintaining it
- that the user journeys have been planned to help the user achieve their goals efficiently
- that the digital product or service design process accounts for humans and includes fully featured accessibility requirements
- whether the project promotes good health and wellness or could be adapted to improve mental well-being or reduce cognitive loads for users
- whether the content is easy to find, accessible and actionable – where appropriate
Our future action plan
Wherever we can, we strive to:
- consider the ethical and environmental impact of AI within our projects
- promote responsibility for the environment within our work where appropriate
- reduce the use of energy, water and other resources
- minimise waste by reduction, re-use and recycling methods
- comply with relevant environmental legislation / regulation
- encourage clients and partners to commit to sustainable design and development philosophies
- promote good design and UX principles to help reduce both the cognitive load on humans but also the impact on servers used for web hosting
- identify and attend appropriate training, and keep up-to-date with current thinking, advice and information for businesses
- develop new ideas and initiatives
We’re in great company
Some of our substantiality and environmental clients we’re proud to have worked with over the years, and who’s work we support in the impact they’re making the world:
British Ecological Society – who are working towards a world in which nature and people thrive.
FLOCERT – as the global certification body for Fairtrade, FLOCERT is on a mission to assure fairness. They offer an array of services to support companies in sourcing on Fairtrade principles, where no Fairtrade Standard applies.
NHS – Sussex Community Trust Care Without Carbon project – an award-winning project design to create NHS workforce behaviour change towards the environment.
Sedex – supply data-driven insights, tools, and services to help companies continuously improve environmental, social, and governance (ESG) outcomes.
WWF-UK – the world’s leading independent conservation organisation. Their mission is to create a world where people and wildlife can thrive together.
ZSL – is a global science-led conservation organisation helping people and wildlife live better together to restore the wonder and diversity of life everywhere.