POLICY STATEMENT

Digital Bricks Learning recognises our responsibility in contributing to global warming through and the importance of sourcing sustainable resources and working with responsible suppliers.

Our environmental management system’s goals:

• Recognising sustainability and environmental protection as a core aspect of our business strategy.
• Acknowledging the necessity of a healthy natural environment for sustainable development.
• Committing to environmental protection and enhancement in our operations.
• Complying with all relevant environmental legislation.
• Minimising the environmental impact of our activities.
• Adhering to waste management practices including reduction, reuse, and recycling.
• Continually improving our environmental performance through implementation, monitoring, and review of our environmental targets, policies, sustainability objectives, programmes, and services.

Principles underlying our policy:

Prevention is better than cure: avoiding environmental problems is preferable to remediation.

The polluter pays: those responsible for environmental damage should bear the cost of prevention or cleanup.

Equal priority: environmental protection is as important as health and safety, quality, customer satisfaction, and financial control.

Resource efficiency: conducting activities in a way that efficiently uses natural resources.

No harm principle: ensuring safety for our people as well as the environment.

Environmental policy commitments

Our business practices, are guided by policies and standards that consider environmental impact. These include:

• Encouraging the delivery of online and e-learning solutions to minimise the need for trainer or learner travel.
• Sourcing local associates for the delivery of in-person training to reduce travel, promote shared transportation, and lower our carbon footprint.
• Having no office space, meaning a reduced carbon footprint from heating and lighting an office that wouldn’t always be in use.
• Identifying and assessing the environmental impacts of our activities, considering the full life cycle perspective.
• Reducing consumption and waste in all materials used, with a strong emphasis on recycling.
• Collaborating with suppliers and clients to assure environmental considerations.
• Utilising energy-saving technologies and practices to minimise consumption and carbon footprint.
• Specifying environmentally friendly materials with suppliers, and adopting effective recycling and waste disposal methods.
• Using equipment that reduces overall consumption.
• Encouraging the use of public transport, where feasible for delivery of in-person training.
• Only using digital documents and devices for the delivery of training. A very limited amount of paper-based resources are used.
• Collaborating with organisations for recycling printer cartridges, paper, and cardboard.
• Continuously supporting and training our staff and associates in these environmental visions and values.

Sustainability responsibility

At Digital Bricks, we have in-house expertise on sustainability, the circular economy and net zero. We care about people and our planet. We wholly subscribe to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a focus on:

Quality education: Our training is accessible and inclusive, taking into account different learner preferences. We understand that not all learners have followed the same path and some may have stronger learner identities than others. We provide training that is sensitively delivered by trainers that understand and empathise with the range of learners and learner needs that are presented. Learning leads to a higher value of employees and higher job satisfaction for individuals within organisations. There is also benefit to wider society from upskilling. We often collaborate with the public and charitable sectors to provide professional learning opportunities to those who would not normally access these, including young people, volunteers and students and apprentices.

Reduced inequalities: We specialise in a series of learning programmes relating to inequalities to inform, teach and share good practice relating to equality, diversity and inclusion, and how they relate to the workplace. We deliver courses aimed at reducing specific inequalities including menopause awareness, disability awareness, neurodiversity and cultural awareness.

Good health and wellbeing: Each of our learning programmes regardless of topic is embedded with mental wellbeing values. We understand the importance of looking after our own mental health and the mental health of our colleagues and wish to affect change on working environments that we engage with. We also deliver a suite of learning programmes that specifically cover mental health and wellbeing, including mental health awareness, digital wellbeing and mental health for managers. We currently work with Scottish Government to develop national initiatives for improving wellbeing throughout the country.

Our preferred delivery method for training is online, which means neither clients nor trainers attend venues, resulting in a reduced carbon footprint by not using venues, caterers, transport and no need for hard copies of resources, allowing us some control over our scope three emissions. We only work with suppliers across our value chain who have ethical sustainability working practices in place, such as our IT provider Indigo IT https://indigoit.co.uk/indigo-policy-page/. We are familiar with current Scottish and UK sustainability policies, including Just Transition – A Fairer, Greener Scotland and Net Zero Strategy: Build Back Greener. We proactively commit to minimising resource consumption and waste. Making online learning more compelling and effective is an environmental aspiration which we share with the Scottish Government.

Should you need to report any issues relating to sustainability or environmental concerns, please reach out to the Director. Reports can also be made confidentially to the Director at hello@digitalbrickslearning.com. Our Sustainability and Environmental Policy is readily available for our staff, associates, clients, and partners. These documents can be accessed through our website (www.digitalbrickslearning.com) or can be provided upon request.