Beryl bike operator gains international standard for minimising environmental impact

Introduced last October, the scheme, known as Beryl Bikes by Breeze, offers e-bikes and pedal bikes for hire across the city. It aims to help reduce congestion and CO2 emissions, improve air quality, and inspire healthy and affordable active travel choices. It is part of the Solent Future Transport Zone, funded by the Department for Transport. Riders can pick up and drop off the bikes from more than 20 locations across the city and are charged 5p a minute.

Beryl has achieved the ISO 14001 environmental management standard, an internationally agreed and recognised standard for Environmental Management Systems (EMS), used by organisations to help identify, manage, monitor and control environmental processes.

Achieving the standard requires organisations to assess environmental issues relevant to their operations, such as waste management, resource use and efficiency. To gain accreditation, Beryl developed its existing environmental practices into a full-scale management system.

This success follows the successful validation of the company’s sustainability targets by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) last year, alongside its recertification as a B-Corp organisation.

Beryl’s sustainability lead, Sophie Noakes, said: “Our schemes play a vital role in decarbonising transport systems and have prevented thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions across the UK, but it's just as vital that we consider the environmental impacts in our day-to-day operations and business decisions.

“Gaining the ISO 14001 standard shows just how seriously we take our own environmental performance and allows us to demonstrate legal compliance, further reduce waste, save money and promote more responsible ways of working.

“Climate change is a huge issue and, as a sustainable company, we must ensure we are part of the solution by constantly striving to reduce our own carbon footprint even further.”

Beryl aims to put sustainability at the core of its daily operations, through, for example: ensuring product longevity by designing its own products in-house to last a minimum of five years; designing, building and fixing vehicles in their own specialist workshops, reducing the need for mass transportation of vehicles over long distances for repair; recycling parts that are damaged beyond repair and unable to be reused where possible.