Sustainability

Environmentally friendly and socially responsible IT services

Access to technology can improve people’s lives and streamline community functions. We regard it as our mission to build IT services and we want to do it responsibly, considering social aspects, our environment and future generations as well as legal, cultural, political, organizational diversity and differences in economic conditions, while being consistent with international norms of behavior. Basefarms management have since the start of 2000 had environmental awareness as an important focus area. Basefarm wants to be a leading player in its segment when it comes to provisioning environmentally IT services through a socially responsible eye.

This vision has been developed based on the ISO 26000:2010 Social responsible guidelines which provides guidance on social responsibility. Basefarm believes that the relationship to the society and environment in which we operate is a critical factor in our ability to continue to operate effectively. Basefarm therefore strives to operate in a socially responsible way and act in an ethical and transparent way that contributes to the health and welfare of the society.

Basefarm respect and care about the environment. It sets requirements for management and Basefarm´s employees and we show our suppliers, customers and partners that we take environmental work seriously.
We constantly work to increase the awareness of our own organization about how we affect the environment and strive to cutting costs by saving energy and reducing the environmental impact.

Our work

It is important to consider reducing our environmental impact as much as possible. At Basefarm we work with continuous improvement and comply with current environmental legislation. We always strive to achieve or exceed the requirements imposed by the authorities. Through environmental thinking in everything from IT equipment to our data centers, purchases, energy consumption, reuse and waste management, we are working to help make the IT industry greener.

We work for both internal and external environmental awareness. Our environmental impact must be minimized throughout our operations through conscious and active selection of the resources we consume and the services and products we sell and use. Managing the operation of large central IT platforms requires server capacity and high consumption of energy. Therefore, we always strive to use best available methods in the work to minimize the harmful impact of our business, with as little impact on the environment as possible. Outsourcing your data center operations to Basefarm reduces the environmental footprint of your IT services!

What we do

At Basefarm Environmental improvement measures are seen as investments, and therefore we only buy environmentally friendly electricity. We design our customers’ and our own operating environments as well adapted to actual needs as possible. Meaning, we optimize capacity so that solutions can scale up instead of having overcapacity that consumes electricity unnecessarily. We also use virtualization technology to the extent possible.

We raise awareness of the environmental issues amongst our employees and encourage them to take the environment into account in our daily work. To name a few examples our offices have built-in time-controlled lighting and we use LED lighting in our Data Center. We employ a low energy policy for our workstations and we strive to use eco-labeled products in our operations. To further reduce the Environmental impact, we print as little as possible and strive to come as near as possible to a paperless office. Our waste management is well organized; recycling paper, corrugated cardboard, glass, batteries, old IT equipment, hazardous waste etc. is monitored and all employees are well aware of where to dispose of what. We also follow a Procurement policy helping us to review and evaluate whether the intended products have an impact on the environment or not before purchasing.

Virtual interaction and travel policy

We work and interact as “virtual” as possible, both globally and with our customers and partners through video conferencing equipment or other collaboration tools. Basefarm’s travel policy ensures that all trips are booked as environmentally-friendly as possible and covers travelling to and from customers, to and from home, to and from airports as well as to and from seminars and courses etc. When possible, we choose to travel with public transportation, co-travel in environmentally-friendly taxi or co-travel in a private- or company car. As far as possible, we use video conferencing systems to limit business travel, both internally and with customers and consultants. Basefarm’s travel policy is applicable both when we travel locally and globally.

ISO 14001:2015 certification

It is essential for us to demonstrate both externally and internally that Basefarm respects and cares about the environment. It sets requirements for management and Basefarm´s employees and we show our suppliers, customers and partners that we take environmental work seriously.

We started working towards an ISO14001 certification in Norway in February 2013, and got the certification in August same year. In 2015 our Swedish office was included in the Environment Management System and our certification. In January 2018 we were certified in accordance with the new standard ISO14001:2015.