HCR Becomes First Carbon Neutral Employee Relocation Company

London, United Kingdom, August 17, 2011 --(PR.com)-- HCR has become the first employee Relocation Management company to achieve Carbon Neutral status, as measured by the globally recognised Publicly Available Specification 2060 (PAS2060).

In order to officially achieve the status, HCR were required to meet the specifications set by PAS2060 in order to guarantee the business is committed to reducing emissions and have net zero overall carbon emissions. This included a scrupulous carbon emission assessment to ISO14064 specification, before counteracting their business emissions via high quality Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) carbon offsets projects.

Being green is nothing new to HCR. Since 2010 they have planted over 800 trees across the region as part of their Sustainable Relocation Promise. Their active approach to paper recycling saw the savings of 190,000 sheets of paper in 2010, and they have also reduced the amount of waste paper bins from one per person to one in five – cutting waste by 50%.

Over the past two years HCR have also made a reduction in their business miles by an astonishing 101,643 - a cost saving of £43,018 through improved Local Area Consultant management techniques.

HCR have over 130 Local Area Consultants (LAC’s) who provide on the ground support for their clients. Their LAC’s carry out local area services and act as a guide to the area for the client, and where needed HCR try to match the nationality of their clients with one of their multilingual LAC’s. Unique to this industry, all their UK based Local Area Consultants have been trained in-house at their Head Office, and are required to attend regular refresher and new training sessions.

HCR believe that their new carbon neutral status is a vital and pragmatic approach to the future of relocation. This is explained by Managing Director, Andrew Finney:

“It is a great achievement that HCR has become the first employee relocation company to become carbon neutral to PAS2060 requirements. HCR continues to clean up and green up the relocation industry; we were the first Relocation Company in the UK to achieve ISO14001 and we continue to set the standard within the industry. Whilst it is virtually impossible for us to have no carbon footprint, we have made firm commitments to reduce it. In addition, as befits a global business, we have chosen to support high quality VCS projects such as hydro power and wind farm programmes across the planet.”

As part of HCR’s offsetting, the company is supporting four separate VCS projects across high growth countries such as China, India and Turkey. These projects not only fulfill the carbon offsetting requirements but also offer great benefits to the local communities in which they are situated:

• Changtan Hydro Power Project, Guizhou Province, China:
This project utilises the hydrological resources of the Shiqian River in a small scale hydropower facility that will generate low emissions electricity for the South China Power Grid.

• Keban 5MW Hydropower, Elazig province, eastern Anatolia, Turkey:
The purpose of this project is to generate power in an efficient, clean, reliable and sustainable way, maintain the utmost respect for social and environmental reflections. It makes use of the leaking water from the reservoir of a closely located hydro dam and discharges the water into the Euphrates River.

• Wutuhe Erji Hydro Power Project, Guizhou Province, China:
The electricity generated by this proposed project is supplied to the China Southern Power Grid (CSPG), which covers Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan and Guizhou province power grid.

• Wind Farm, Rajasthan, India:
This project harnesses renewable resources in the region, thereby displacing non-renewable natural resources and ultimately leading to sustainable economic and environmental development.

Dr Wendy Buckley, director of award winning environmental specialists, Carbon Footprint Ltd who partnered with HCR to achieve its Carbon Neutral status commented:

“PAS2060 is the benchmark for carbon neutrality and ensures that robust measurement of emissions and internationally recognised carbon offsetting takes place. Of equal importance, it makes sure that a firm commitment and objectives are in place for any organisation to reduce their own emissions (not just rely on another organisation to do it). Once again HCR show their commitment to building their rapidly growing business with sustainable practices at the core of all they do.”

For more information on how your organisation can work with HCR to benefit from our greener relocation services, please contact Sally Kelly on: 01256 313780 or via email skelly@hcr.co.uk

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