Life in… Team Sustainability

Ian Allen, Head of Product Management at Mercedes-Benz Cars UK, shares the green goals of Team Sustainability

Who are Team Sustainability?

“Team Sustainability are a group of like-minded colleagues who are committed to communicating and raising awareness of sustainability across Mercedes-Benz in the UK, and embed the principle of ‘We are sustainability’.

“Team Sustainability have been in place since 2020 but following the Covid-19 pandemic, we decided to take a step back to think about the group’s purpose for the future and how we could align this with the other cultural focuses. We wanted to identify the areas where we could make a difference and went through an in-depth process of looking at global sustainable goals put together in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to help bring focus to our activities.”

Team Sustainability’s key areas of focus…

Energy

“We have contracts with a renewable electricity provider so we use ‘green gas’ and will shortly start work on installing a solar PV system at Tongwell, something that will save more than 300 tonnes of carbon every year. We’re championing the use of clean energy and with the huge increase in energy prices, we are keen to collect ideas to reduce the amount of energy we use at work and at home.”

Community

“We’re working to identify opportunities in the local community where we can help in making it more sustainable – for example, some of the team spent a rewarding lunchtime planting trees at Linford Wood in Milton Keynes as part of an initiative run by The Parks Trust.”

Consumption

“This is the principle of reduce, reuse, recycle – everything from thinking about how we can reduce our energy and water consumption, to reusing old clothes and making sure everyone recycles correctly.”

Climate

“Our global target of becoming net zero as a global car company by 2039 is well documented and all of our manufacturing plants are now net zero. We are also targeting making our Tongwell office net zero and the new solar array will be a major step in achieving that goal.”

“To underpin these areas of focus, we’re identifying partners – such as environmental organisations or utility providers – who can help us to achieve our goals.”

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