Archive

We supported the RA Agency Futures Program, identifying and developing black female talent in the scripted camera department, by offering space and equipment. To find out more about RA Agency … Read more

Our Acton and Bristol Branches now have charging stations to allow us to use electric vehicles to transport your goods and so that our staff can commute via electric vehicles. … Read more

We all agree in the importance of working together and sharing best practice, so Barry Bassett, VMI’s Managing Director set up a new sustainability group in late 2021, to build … Read more

Engaging with all stakeholders on our climate crisis journey is integral to realising the change needed. One step in this is educating our team on the basics of Climate Change … Read more

Our company policy now requires meals and drinks paid for by the company to be mostly vegetarian saving approx. 480 kgs of CO2e (based on current employee count and purchasing … Read more

We have reviewed our banking facilities and are pleased to be with the Cooperative Bank, who have the best ESG profile of all UK banks*. We continue to review all … Read more

VMI is voted a Climate Leader by Ealing council in 2021 for its sustainability drive.

We created a company travel policy, committing to not using airplanes for all European travel. Our policy promotes video conferencing, bike and rail travel, suggests road travel as Plan B … Read more

We use  Splosh, who provide washing up liquid, cleaning products and hand-wash, to reduce plastic waste. Their products are refilled using pouches, which are sent back for refilling or to … Read more

All of our staff and their families can access confidential one-on-one advice on any subject, from mortgages to mental health, for which they need support.

We’ve been recognised by Bafta’s albert initiative as a supplier going the extra mile to be green and support the production industry. By signing this declaration, we endeavour to work alongside … Read more

This is our benchmark year for carbon reduction. We audited our emissions and discovered we created 123,725KG of CO2e emissions in 2019. We measured Scopes 1 and 2 along with … Read more

We offer a monthly ‘wellness day’ to staff, working with Lulabelle Wellness, giving staff an individual 15 minute gentle massage with a trained masseuse. This has been incredibly popular and … Read more

We archive all documents electronically, to save printing and storage and set up a cloud-based HR system, where staff can access all company procedures and staff manuals. This ensures all … Read more

We are proud to be founding members and continuing contributors of Bectu’s Film for Future. To promote best sustainable practices within the department, the Camera Branch’s Sustainability working group, has … Read more

We switched to EPI biodegradable plastic to seal filters.

We tested this plastic ourselves to see how it degrades and found that it didn’t perform as well as we had hoped and plan to change to potato starch based tubing later in 2022.

You might be interested to note that this change was inspired by client feedback in our annual customer questionnaire survey.

We switched to paper adhesive labels to seal cables. These give us and clients a visible indication of whether cables require testing or not.  The labels are recycled paper for … Read more

Year two of our superheroes fundraising bike ride from London to Bristol and we doubled our fundraising to £20,000! The money raised all goes to MAG International to make the … Read more

VMI’s media rental arm, VMEDIA, offers the first solely electric delivery service from a camera/media company.  This means 100% of our VMedia deliveries will be electric! As a low-carbon service, … Read more

We buy unlimited free fruit for staff to munch on. This really simple and popular decision has continued and encourages great eating and is much more healthy than the free … Read more

We only use recycled paper and we recycle all paper and cardboard waste that it produces. Faxes and emails are received and filed electronically, avoiding all printing of them.

Superhero bicycle rides begin! In our first year, riding from London to Amsterdam, we beat our fundraising target of £10,000. It’s our goal that the world is free of landmines … Read more

We are now powered by 100% renewable electricity!!

Over a 4-year period, VMI cut its energy use in Acton by 8% annually through smart energy-reducing measures. Having smart meters really helped us to monitor the effects of these … Read more

We have fan-assisted heat extraction which requires no refrigeration gases to cool our building. Overnight, the fans expel hot air collected in the ceiling space. However, as we are seeing … Read more

We monitor the score that you give us for customer service every year and hope to always improve on this. We still read every comment that clients make on our … Read more

We’ve installed water meters to monitor our usage with a goal of lowering our water and energy usage.

Created a home-working provision to reduce commuting emissions and improve our staff’s work/life balance. This is available to all employees whose jobs aren’t dependent on being in the warehouse. [VMI … Read more

We eradicated bottled water deliveries, installing a mains-fed water cooler instead at our Acton base. This supplies ground-cooled filtered tap water fountain cutting transport emissions, plastic-creation and electricity consumption. 

The floors of the warehouse are installed with Ecotiles, insulating the space. Made from recycled Tetrapaks, Ecotiles are 100% recyclable after their lifespan of 20 years, contain no toxic materials, … Read more

We installed LED lights through our London facility. These offer a better quality of light, are less tiring to staff than fluorescent, as well as reducing electricity by approximately 90% … Read more

We eradicated towel waste, having installed Dyson Blade hand driers in toilets in both VMI buildings. Hand dryers reduce our carbon emissions compared to paper towels by up to 70%.  … Read more

We installed a compressor to distribute pumped, filtered air around the building. Before this, we were buying around 200 cans of pressurised air annually. We stopped this and installed compressors … Read more

We introduced a paid three-month internship programme which provided significant camera training and a route into the TV industry for those with little or some experience. Over half of our … Read more

The Cycle to Work scheme allows staff to buy decent bikes without the large upfront pay out. We’re proud to be a part of it. Three of our London team … Read more

We introduce free-of charge non time-specific deliveries in order to create more multiple drop trips significantly reducing in our transport-created emissions.  

Client Satisfaction Surveys – Your opinion is so important to us we introduced sending clients annual client satisfaction surveys, publishing these on our website. We read all feedback (good and … Read more

Film technology changes fast. We offer free, continued professional development videos and guides to the industry. There’s a wealth of knowledge on our Learn & Help page and we’ve made … Read more

We began producing web guides covering the transition to HD and then extended this to lighting, cinematography and other subjects in order to spread good practice and technological developments within … Read more

We have always worked towards minimising noise disturbance caused by our business to neighbours. As we transition to electric vehicles this will improve even further.  

Amazingly, we even set up our own 19 seat screening theatre at our 19 D’Arblay Street Soho office, so that we could present our ‘HD for Producers’ seminar every week.  … Read more

We began running workshops to promote solid state production workflows to the industry.  [Solid-state workflow course given in Soho, circa 2004] 

We began promoting the environmental merits of tape-less technology reducing stock waste to begin early migration from tape-based production.  This included producing internet guides and also running workshops to help … Read more

All our batteries are retired from service and sent back to the manufacturer, either Anton/Bauer or Hawk-Woods for recycling. Anton/Bauer has partnered with Call 2 Recycle to recycle their batteries. … Read more