From Acorns to Mighty Oaks: Precision’s untold sustainability story.

You may be thinking this is another one of those epic business growth against adversity tales. But it isn’t, it is literally about trees! The ‘Precision Trees’ and how they play a critical role in our sustainability story.

Precision

We are best known for our environmentally friendly, award-winning digital and marketing solutions. All delivered from our solar-powered Bury St Edmunds head office. But becoming a carbon neutral business requires thought and dedication, that’s where the trees come in.

Our solar panels generate the energy to drive our mailing machines and print presses, they also power our EV fleet that includes a forklift! We recycle all production paper, cardboard and plastic waste; further we recycle used pallets, ink cartridges, clean kitchen waste and much more. We use timers to limit precious energy usage and monitor our minimal water usage. But there will always be some residual carbon, locking it in a dark cupboard is simply not an option!

The Trees

So back to our lovely trees. With our carbon mitigation activity increasing year on year, the focus now shifts to offsetting the minimal carbon our business generates. We selected the excellent Carbon Footprint Ltd as our offset partners. They have years of experience in providing global offset schemes. Our brief to them was simple, provide us with a scheme to support local wildlife habitats. As well as enhancing the natural UK landscape and critically offset our minimal CO₂ emissions.

They chose a native UK tree planting scheme that’s just 10 miles down the road from our Bury St Edmunds head office. It’s located at the delightful Barnham Cross Common, this local nature reserve covers 69 hectares of gentle Breckland countryside. With its grassland and heath common it supports diverse habitats and makes for excellent weekend walks. Located on the southern edges of the British Trust for Ornithology. It provides the perfect environment for the 60 plus breeding birds that can be found there.

Carbon Footprint select only native broad leaf tree varieties, they have chosen from Hawthorn, Oak, Hazel, Birch, Maple, Rowan, Blackthorn and Wild Cherry in their planting schemes. This activity complements The Woodland Trust’s plan to help tackle climate change by planting 50 million trees in the UK by 2025.

Away from the difficulties of the day it’s wonderful to be involved in a real sustainability success story, where distancing is not an issue and the natural environment wins out. If you know the area or are simply passing through then please take the time to explore this little known gem.

Precision look forward to sharing our story on next year’s tree planting, Alex Stores, Tree Planting Manager at Carbon Footprint, has even promised we can don our wellies and get involved in the planting. She might regret that!