Magenta Security’s Green New Deal: Electric Vehicles, Remote Work and Industry Change

In a time where it has been challenging to find reasons for optimism, our sustainability mission has been a source of pride and excitement. Here’s why Magenta Security will emerge from this pandemic a greener, more efficient and more committed company than ever before.

Magenta Security’s vehicle fleet will be fully electric by 2025

For a company dedicated to reducing our impact on the natural world and global warming, electric vehicles were a source of frustration. We estimated that our security fleet alone was using 15,000 litres of fuel a year but electric vehicles simply didn’t provide the range that we needed to provide our services.

That was until very recently. We are excited to announce that all of our petrol vehicles are being phased out for electric replacements, with many already on the road and dozens more soon to be delivered.

By 2025, assuming there are no supply-side issues, the last of our petrol vehicles will be replaced and Magenta Security will be equipped with a fully electric fleet. This is a monumental milestone for the company as it represents that last major hurdle in our mission to be the country’s greenest security company.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – could “Remote” be the fourth R?

Magenta Security has applied the principles of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle across our company for many years, with all staff educated on sustainability and encouraged to share their ideas for how the company can be greener.

But it wasn’t until the coronavirus pandemic that we were forced to implement the equipment and systems necessary to enable remote working for our customer services, management and sales teams.

While this move was to protect our staff and the wider community from exposure to COVID-19, it has also revealed the many sustainability improvements provided by remote working that we will continue to implement:

• Many internal, client and recruitment meetings can now be carried out via video calls, reducing unnecessary travel and the associated emissions
• Reduced use of office space results in solar panels providing surplus electricity, with savings reinvested into sustainability efforts
• Our offices are using less resources as a whole, meaning less purchases, less deliveries, less manufacturing and so on
• Bike usage has been encouraged as a means of travelling and exercising safely and we expect this interest to continue

MD Abbey Petkar joins Professor Martin Gill for Sustainability Webinar

Abbey Petkar, Managing Director of Magenta Security, has been an advocate for a greener security industry for more than two decades. Under his leadership, Magenta Security was the first security company in Europe to achieve the ISO 14001 environmental standard and his work has continued to this day.

Abbey was recently invited by Professor Martin Gill, Director of Perpetuity Research, to join a virtual panel on sustainability in the security industry. Abbey was joined by Samantha Lang, Risk Manager at SecuriGroup, and Catherine Sheehy, Global Lead of Sustainability Partnerships at UL Retail and Consumer Products.

The discussion, chaired by Martin Gill, is essential viewing for anyone interested in what must be done for the security industry to meet its sustainability targets going forward. We urge viewing the entire video, accessible in the link below, but for those who want a summary, some key points were:

• Smaller companies that cannot afford large-scale overhauls should start small with their sustainability goals and build further improvements into growth plan
• Companies with a serious sustainability mission should also consider their supply chain and use their weight as customers to urge change on a larger scale
• The sustainability sector has been “COVID-proof” with stock markets, investors and customers all showing a preference towards green business

Watch the full webinar on security and sustainability here.

If you would like to learn more about building and running a sustainable business, Magenta Security provides free, individualised advice to companies wishing to become greener, whether you represent a startup or an international corporation. Please call 0800 772 3786 to make an enquiry.

Magenta Security provide award winning security services throughout the UK. We are in the top 5% of ACS approved contractors and were the first security company in Europe to be awarded ISO 14001 for our environmental management systems.