Vantage is committed to promoting sustainability. We recognize that all firms and individuals have an important role to play in reducing negative environmental impacts and specifically tackling climate change.  As such, concern for the environment and the promotion of a broader sustainability agenda are integral to Vantage activities and the management of the organization.  We aim to follow and to promote good sustainability practice, to reduce the environmental impacts of all our activities and to help our clients and partners to do the same.

We have developed the Vantage Sustainability Policy, which comprises a set of principles, operating procedures and business targets.

Principles

Our Sustainability Policy is based upon the following principles:

• To comply with, and exceed where practicable, all applicable legislation, regulations and codes of practice.
• To integrate sustainability considerations into all our business decisions.
• To ensure that all staff are fully aware of our Sustainability Policy and are committed to implementing and improving it.
• To minimize the impact on sustainability of all office and transportation activities.
• To make clients and suppliers aware of our Sustainability Policy, and encourage them to adopt sound sustainable management practices.
• To review, annually report, and to continually strive to improve our sustainability performance.

In order to put these principles into action and to reduce our negative environmental impacts as a firm and as individuals, Vantage implements the following procedures:

Minimizing carbon emissions from travel

• Where possible, employees should use public transport, walk or cycle to attend meetings, apart from in exceptional circumstances where this is impractical and/or cost prohibitive.
• Wherever possible, employees use clean-tech vehicles rather than traditionally powered cars and aircraft
• All employee air travel requires CEO sign-off and is subject to review to determine if alternative travel arrangements have been explored
• Wherever possible, employee travel within Canada or within a 500km radius, will be undertaken by train
• Vantage shall provide employees with technology options that provide an alternative that can avoid the need to physically travel to meetings, including teleconferencing, web cams, and the efficient timing of meetings to avoid multiple trips.
• Vantage will reduce the need for our staff to travel by supporting alternative working arrangements, including home working
• Vantage will promote the use of public transport by locating our offices in accessible locations.

Minimize water consumption, waste & maximize recycling

• Vantage believes that the consumption of bottled water in an office or hospitality context is unnecessary. We use mains water in our office environments and request that venues to do the same for all Vantage events and meetings.
• Minimize our use of paper and other office consumables, for example by double-siding all paper used.
• As far as possible arrange for the reuse or recycling of all waste, including paper, computer supplies and redundant equipment.
• Reduce the energy consumption of office equipment by purchasing energy efficient equipment and employing good housekeeping (switching off equipment that is not in use).

Working practices

• Vantage undertakes regular annual employee awareness sessions to ensure every employee adheres to our sustainability policy
• Wherever possible we source products and services from suppliers with a sustainability policy. This primarily covers printing supplies, stationery, computing equipment and business travel.
• Vantage requests that every employee takes account of sustainability issues in their advice to clients.
• Vantage will include a copy of our Sustainability Policy in all our proposals to clients.

Reporting our progress

• Vantage will use our own sustainability and emissions management solution to monitor our impact in real-time and identify potential sustainability opportunities.
• Vantage will report annually our environmental impact and progress against sustainability goals.

Vantage Sustainability Targets

• Plan to reduce emissions per employee by using co-working spaces as much as possible.
• Increase volunteering hours donated per employee to 100% of the allocated quota.