Carbon-neutral hire since 2022. VMI is Albert-certified Carbon Neutral, so hiring from VMI is entirely climate neutral.
VMI is on target to becoming entirely net zero by 2030, having reduced its 2023 carbon emissions by 47% and pays to offset its remaining footprint through an Albert-approved projects, to maintain its official Carbon Neutral status.
VMI’s sustainability leadership has won it much acclaim and multiple awards. VMI has used 100% renewable energy since 2017, installed 55KW solar panels to become a net energy exporter for 1/3 of the year, eliminated landfill waste, single-use plastics, and now has a vehicle fleet of mainly EV/hybrid vans. VMI also champions fair pay, employee wellbeing, apprenticeships, and young creatives while promoting industry-wide sustainability through its Green Pledge and Rental Sustainability Site.
Read our Sustainability Statement here to find out why hiring from VMI is 100% climate-neutral.
See our 20 year timeline history of sustainability, which saw the UK Government recognise our efforts at COP26 in 2021 with a special award, Hero of Net Zero. VMI’s fifth carbon audit for 2024 has been published by an Albert-approved consultancy and invested in an approved offsetting scheme for the second year in a row to ensure that VMI is officially Carbon Neutral since 2022. Visit VMI’s Published Carbon Audits.
Read our VMI’s Environment and Sustainability Policy Read SME guide to reducing carbon footprint
RD Group has announced the acquisition of VMI.TV, the nearly 50-year-old camera, lens and lighting rental house. The acquisition “secures the future of a deeply established independent supplier, protects access to … Read more
Since 2023, VMI has been a net energy exporter for four months annually. Our 55kW solar arrays, installed on the roofs of our building, generates more power than we consume, even while charging EVs and batteries, allowing us to export surplus energy. It’s a proud milestone proving sustainability and business can thrive together, just like VMI stands for.
Read more
VMI’s 40KW solar PV array has been working, and is generating some 82MWh of electricity since it was installed in early 2022. This is equivalent to having planted 965 trees, by saving 58T of CO2. See the live feed here.
For the third year in a row, VMI becomes Albert-Certified Carbon-Neutral by offsetting its 85.38T of Carbon emissions generated in 2024, in an Albert-Approved Scheme to protect forests in Paraguay.
VMI surveyed its staff and clients in an online poll in May 2025 and whilst overwhelmingly, 47% voted for VMI to support a carbon avoidance project, run by Ecology, to protect forests in Paraguay.
Compared to 2023, we have cut our operational carbon footprint by an impressive 47%
Three VMI staff have switched to EVs and hybrids during 2024, cutting our Scope 3 emissions for 2024 by 43.48 tonnes of CO₂e.
VMI TV won the West London Business SME Green Business of the Year award in its inaugoral year for its commitment to sustainability. Achieving a 50% emissions reduction, VMI leads the industry with net-zero goals, renewable energy, and innovative eco-conscious initiatives.
VMI was given a 2024 CDP SME Climate Score of SME B, which places it in the highest score for our category, confirming that VMI is leading in environmental transparency and driving sustainable change.
We are thrilled to announce the winner of the 2024 Sustainable Film Competition, organized by VMI and Sustainable Film: The House of Fish, directed and produced by the talented Santiago Burin des Roziers.
VMI’s 2021 net zero plan aimed to convert its diesel fleet to EVs by 2025 but was hindered by payload and range issues, however by November 2024, most vehicles were replaced with EV or hybrid, which we estimate will reduce diesel emissions by 60%+ in 2025 compared with 2021.
VMI is shortlisted company in the 2023 Park Royal Business Awards for 2 awards – both for the Green ‘Race to Zero’ award and also Park Royal Business of the Year 2023 – the same award that we won this year! Wow – two award nominations!
Read how VMI’s entire environmental strategy and successes were all triggered by a chance comment made in 2018 by one of VMI’s clients, who was concerned about its use of single-use plastic to wrap cables and filters.
We are all the sum product of our choices and how we choose to act on inconvenient truths shapes who we are and how we do business.
CALLING ALL SUSTAINABLY MINDED FILMMAKERS! Our sustainability film competition was so successful last year, that VMI and Sustainable Film decided to repeat it again this year, offering a prize to … Read more
The 2023 CO2 audit shows VMI is just 0.7tCO2e above its 2030 target, aligning with the SME Climate Hub’s reduction pathway. VMI remains on track to achieve net-zero by 2030.
VMI featured in new Sustainability Guide, compiled by ACrew4U | cre8tiveBank and in partnership with evcom. Bill Mountain of ACrew4U stated he was ‘sufficiently impressed with VMI’s decarbonisation success,’ that he wanted to VMI as a case study, which features on page 28! Download your copy here
It is great to be recognised for doing what we consider to be the right thing. Here is an article written by the United Nations Network on Climate Change on … Read more
Bristol’s two EVs drove 32K miles and saved an estimated 9.5 metric tonnes of CO2 last year, which represented more than 10% of our annual emissions.
These saved an estimated 9.5 metric tonnes of CO2 last year and being charged mainly from our solar panels, or from fully sustainable sources, makes Bristol deliveries effectively net zero!
VMI is pleased to sponsor The Flint’s Green Line initiative to encourage other visitors travelling to this year’s IBC exhibition in Amsterdam in September to use the Eurostar and avoid using air travel.
For tickets and partnerships, contact nhmowman@theflint.media
Ecologi announced on Earth Day (22 April), that their judging panel had awarded VMI with a Gold Award for its carbon reduction successes.
For the second year in a row, VMI becomes Albert-Certified Carbon-Neutral by offsetting its 79.8T of Carbon emissions generated in 2022, in an Albert-Approved Scheme to build a solar panel power station in Morocco following the results of an online survey of its staff and clients over which scheme to invest in, run by Ecology.
After three years of dedicated efforts to reduce its carbon footprint, VMI surpassed expectations with a remarkable 36% reduction in its operational carbon footprint in 2023 compared to 2022.
Download full report
Unbelievably, Neil Howman of On-line Publisher, Flint Media, was so impressed with the sustainability efforts of VMI, that they asked whether we could help them to create a 10 page guide to helping companies start their sustainability Journey.
This free guide is available to download here
We were thrilled when Zerb, the official magazine of the GBCT, chose to profile VMI’s climate-friendly actions in a 5-page case study in their Spring edition of the quarterly Zerb Magazine. It is great when doing the right thing is recognised to be a good thing too!
VMI and Sustainable Film arranged a competition to offer two productions the opportunity to win camera and grip equipment for free. The focus was on films with sustainability messages or female-led crew, promoting inclusivity and environmental consciousness. After a rigorous judging process, the winners were announced in two categories: “She’s Got This” and “Sustainability Film.”
Definition Magazine ran a full page feature on VMI and its sustainability initiatives this month.
We have been recycling all of our bio waste for some years but Bristol, has gone one better and recycles all food waste with their own compost heap.
VMI publishes a short film to show our approach to sustainability and how we have reengineered our business to become an Albert-approved Carbon-Neutral rental company since 2022.
VMI’s emissions targets have been recognised by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) website and partners’ website We Mean Business as being on target to our Net Zero by 2030 commitment.
In May 2023, VMI imported 2,307KWh of power from the grid but with 55KW of solar PV panels installed, actually exported 2,788KWh, between London and Bristol, became a net exporter of 481KWh to the grid and June was even better, exporting 1.06MWh of power.
VMI company wood-burning pizza-experience day, May 2023, which was a real effort, for which a lot of fun was had by all and a lot of pizzas were consumed too!
Barry, the Managing Director, made the sourdough bases and tomato sauce for 25 pizzas and also cooked the pizzas, Chau did the shopping and both Chau & Rosie helped with the setup, prep and the clear up and thanks to the entire team for making it such a great experience! Special thanks to Ruben for making a great video, so that we can remember it so well!
This is not quite as crazy as it sounds but there genuinely is a region of Brazilian rainforest which we have paid to be caretakers of, as part of an Albert-certified CO2e offsetting scheme, to help us achieve Albert-approved Carbon neutral status since 2022.
Read all about the project.
VMI’s London HQ building which was fitted with a 10KW Solar PV array in 2022, has been expanded to 40KW in April 2023 in order to cope with the substantial number of EVs used by its team to commute, having ditched their diesels. It will also help with VMI’s EV vans which are expected to arrive in 2024. Even with EVs, 40KW is a more power than the London branch uses ever uses at peak time.
VMI paid to offset our 121.4T of CO2e carbon emissions generated in 2022 to invest in a project to preserve the Brazilian Rainforest to avoid deforestation over a 30 year project lifetime. In doing so, VMI has become an Albert-certified Carbon-Neutral company, since 2022.
VMI has completed its third Carbon audit, which confirms that CO2 emissions have reduced for a 3rd year and are now at half of 2019 levels, two full years ahead of schedule from 213T CO2e to 121.4T CO2e, a reduction of 48.12% compared to the 2019 baseline and a 43% saving from 2021. (source: VMI 2022 Carbon Audit)
VMI has completed its third Carbon audit, which confirms that CO2 emissions have reduced for a 3rd year and are now at half of 2019 levels, two full years ahead of schedule.
VMI’s Bristol building which was fitted with a 10.6KW Solar PV array in 2022, has been expanded to 15KW in March 2023 in order to provide the majority of it’s power requirements, specifically to cope with the introduction of EVs to the Bristol branch.
VMI, a has been awarded Highly Commended for Park Royal Business of the Year and named a finalist for Race To Zero Company of the Year in the West London Business awards 2023. The recognition was given in response to the company’s efforts to galvanize the industry around net-zero targets.
Read an article published in the Ealing News about VMI being shortlisted for this years West London Business Awards in two categories: Green Race to Zero Business and Park Royal Business of the Year.
VMI hosted a one day introductory course in February for anyone in the industry wanting to know more about lighting and specifically, learning how to light. The course was given by Lighting Camera Operator Anthony Wood to be a really hands-on day of people collaborating and working together to light interview setups with a lot of different lights.
We all like the idea of sustainable business and sustainable living but what about adopting sustainable techniques in an office?
This is how we managed to transform 2 offices for a building project, whilst saving money and reusing all of our materials.
VMI Named West London Company of the Year For Leading On Climate Change
The actions and leadership of VMI and its Managing Director in galvanizing the industry around net zero targets have been recognised by West London Business.
VMI have won two prestigious awards at the West London Business Awards. It is named West London Company of the Year 2022 while MD Barry Bassett won Business Leader of the Year.
A year into committing to use Splosh as a supplier of cleaning products, VMI has all but eradicated plastic waste from bottles and cartons. Splosh manufacture environmentally-friendly hand soap, dishwasher tablets and other cleaning materials and supply refill pouches which are themselves returnable for reuse, thus saving plastic waste by a whopping 90%.
The supply chain issues post-COVID has meant that Bristol has been waiting a full year for their first of two EV to arrive with their electric van expected to arrive by Christmas.
VMI held a very successful lighting event at the brand-new Boomsatsuma studios in Brislington, Bristol on 25 October 2022.
After widespread experimentation with different materials, VMI finally took delivery of its first bags made entirely of potato starch which break down in a regular consumer compost bin within 3-months.
There has been a lot of research demonstrating the positive impact that pets can have on staff, just by being in the workplace.
So if you visit VMI in Acton, you might just see Paula’s dog – here sporting a VMI cap – doing his thing to keep VMI a happy place!.
VMI’s solar panels in London and Bristol generated 1.05MWh in June 2022, saving an estimated 4.46T of CO2.
VMI’s net-zero sustainability policy required us to replace air travel with more sustainable methods of transport, so for the first time, VMI will be travelling to IBC in 2022 with Eurostar!
VMI’s new in-person workshops which allow visitors to get hands on with equipment and to talk about it in-person only underlines the value of what we’ve missed this last couple of years.
Our second annual carbon audit of 2021 is complete and demonstrates that VMI has reduced its total carbon emissions, according to the Science-Based Target Initiative from 234TCO2e to 213TCO2e, a reduction of 8.9% compared to the 2019 baseline, on target with our net-zero by 2030 strategy.
Our commitment is to publish our results every year, so view the full report and our roadmap as to how we plan to achieve net-zero by 2030 on the link here.
VMI’s Bristol building has been fitted with a 10.6KW Solar PV array, to provide the majority of it’s power requirements.
Click here to see before and after pictures!
Amazingly, Bristol’s Sola PV installation has cut their power use by more than half (56%), though the pictures tell the full story!
In May 2022, in spite of having a 100% green electricity tariff since 2018, VMI installed 10KW of solar panels to its London HQ to generate most of its own power.
50% Funding for environmental improvements to Bristol was sought and approved from the West of England Combined Authority and European Regional Development Fund.
Website Link
VMI held a BLIKE open day in April for our staff to try out the full range of E-Bikes available to lease from BLIKE.
These two initiatives are predicted to save 6.6T CO2 per year.
VMI has been awarded an Ealing Business Pioneers grant to help fund running in-person courses to spread awareness of the benefits and advantages of the latest LED lighting technology.
We strongly believe in the power of community and continues to share ideas and solutions that inspire wider industry action and in June 2021, we committed to becoming a net zero organisation by 2030 and to halve its carbon emissions by 2025 using 2019 as the baseline year.
Download VMI Environmental and Sustainability Policy Document
The new Lastolite Rapids are even more versatile than the original, as we supply them with a variety of covers including black, white, silver and diffusion and can be easily assembled in 60 seconds. They can be reused over and over and even fit into a car – try that with an 8×8 poly!
In February 2022, we polled the entire VMI staff and overwhelmingly, people asked us to provide them with predominantly vegetarian food.
Since 2019, as part of our annual carbon audit, we audit our waste every year to confirm that our waste reduction plan is working.
Not many people know that we have been working for almost 20 years to make VMI into a more sustainable and socially equitable company. We are totally committed to becoming a Net-Zero company by 2030 have launched a microsite to share our journey.
VMI has partnered with Bristol-based college, boomsatsuma, donating a range of lighting equipment for BA Hons Filmmaking Production and Post-production degree student skills development, Jan 2021.
VMI launched the BLIKE scheme as an alternative to the existing Cycle-to-Work scheme, to personally lease E-Bikes as a healthier and cost-effective way of commuting.
Latest guidance document detailing policies and and recommendations to help camera assistants, producers and rental companies to adopt more sustainable working practices.
We’re auditing all of our data centres to make sure that our hosts all use 100% renewable electricity.
Even if packaging can be recycled, it’s better if it can be eliminated in the first place.
We will be a Carbon Neutral company, by measuring and offsetting all CO2e emissions that we create operationally.
This will be accredited by Roxy Ericksson of One-Thing to be recognised by Albert.
Carbon neutrality isn’t the same as net-zero but helps us on our way to achieving full net-zero by 2030.
We will be offsetting all the commutes measured and indeed all of the CO2 which our audit calculates that we were responsible for.
In building projects like this, VMI require that builders only use timber from sustainable (managed) forests and when tendering for the work contractors must show their sustainability protocols.
We plan that by end end of 2022 55% of our vehicle fleet will be electric. This could save over 9,000 KG of CO2e.
VMI won a national award being crowned “Hero of Net Zero” by the UK Government at the international COP26 climate summit in November 2021 for its work on sustainability.
The Government Business Climate Hub keeps a register of all UK companies who have committed to a net Zero Pledge and August 2021 saw VMI also adding its name.
VMI 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 and the Futures Program: www.ra-agency.online.
Picture Credit: Teresa Adamson (2nd AC) training Samara Addai (Camera Trainee) to assist stepping up to 2nd AC.
We installed EV charging bays, for which 1 x high speed charger was installed, for electric vans and staff cars in our Acton Branch. Charge points were also installed in anticipation of an electric van in 2022 in Bristol also.
For the third year in as many years, VMI has been nominated as a finalist for the West London Business Awards. VMI has been shortlisted as one of three companies for the Green ‘Race to Zero’ Business of the Year but what is really surprising is that also, for the first time, we have been also shortlisted as one of three companies in the category of Park Royal Business of the Year.
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 on the excellent work of Jason Henwood pre-COVID and to involve all UK rental companies who are interested in sustainability.
The goal is simply to share everything that we have learned that is both good and also doesn’t really work and to collaborate openly in order to build a more sustainable industry.
The first meeting was held on Wednesday 17 November 2021 and we plan to meet quarterly from hereon.
96% of the energy used is output as heat, leaving only 4% to produce light. This makes them immensely inefficient and not at all compatible with modern sustainability ideals and on these grounds, VMI has decided to retire all of its tungsten lighting in October 2021*.
The manufacturers confirm that the natural rubber based adhesive is also residue resistant, which is very important with camera and gaffer tape and a huge leap forward in the pursuit of producing an environmentally friendly gaffer tape.
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 so that they feel informed enough to speak about it and understand the urgency and what we can do about it.
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 levels).
All old ink and toner cartridges are disposed of in a responsible and sustainable manner with a new recycling bin.
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 financial investments, including pensions, and if necessary, are moving from institutions investing in arms, coal, oil and natural gas.
*Rated by Sustainalytics in the Regional Banks subindustry with a score of 9.2 as of 11 June 2021.
We’ve created our Net Zero Roadmap! We will reduce our emissions to the limits that technology and society set for us by 2030 and offset any residual emissions along the way.
VMI is voted a Climate Leader by Ealing Council in 2021 for its sustainability drive.
VMI has made the transition to using rechargeable AA batteries and entirely stopped the environmentally harmful use of disposable batteries and shared this practice with the wider rental community.
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 and, only when flying is necessary, asks staff members to discriminate, where possible, between airlines/planes based on fuel and fleet efficiency.
For the last year we were able to divert everything we didn’t need anymore to be fully recycled or composted, making us 100% landfill-free!
We use Splosh, who provide washing up liquid, cleaning products and hand-wash, in order to entirely eliminate unnecessary plastic waste, since their products are refilled using pouches, which are then sent back for refilling or to be turned into new products. Splosh is formulated using kind chemicals which are also good for the environment. Less and smaller deliveries mean lower carbon emissions.
VMI completed its first ever Carbon Audit. Since 2020 was such a peculiar year, we used 2019 as our base year from which all of our carbon saving measures will be compared with.
We have been powered solely by 100% renewable electricity since 2016 at all our sites.
A surprise announcement by Infinity Photo-Optical Company, saw VMI’s Managing Director, Barry Bassett being awarded their annual Nelsoniantm Award to recognise his work and lifetime commitment to imaging excellence and specifically in publishing his paper on macro and micro cinematography.
The Living Wage foundation are the organisation at the heart of the independent movement of businesses and people that campaign for the idea that a hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay.
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 Albert to direct our industry into more sustainable practices, including taking trains instead of planes, using sustainable paper, reducing wasteful packaging, minimising the use of single use plastics etc. Albert Certification
VMI is a finalist in two categories of the 7th annual West London Business Awards, for “Creative/Media Business of the Year” and also the “Responsible Workplace award”.
The Guild of Television Camera Professionals has written an article on our green credentials.
We were able to raise over £25,000 for MAG, who save people from landmines. Read Full Story about why we did did this, how the campaign was started and see pictures of the rides and videos.
We have received accreditation as a Living Wage Provider. VMI has received formal recognition of its status as a fully accredited Living Wage Employer. This is the only UK wage rate based on the actual cost of living in London.
VMI has taken great strides to reduce its impact on the environment and continues to do so, going forward, wherever and whenever possible with a new initiative to ban single-use … Read more
VMI was a finalist for the 6th annual West London Business Awards, for the category of Creative/Media Business of the Year at the 2019 West London Business Awards. The award celebrated business excellence, and showcases … 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 water and waste. We will use this number as our starting line to measure further into Scope 3 and with the goal of Net Zero by 2030.
VMI has was a finalist for the 6th annual West London Business Awards, for the category of Creative/Media Business of the Year at the 2019 West London Business Awards.
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 the last Tuesday of the month is eagerly awaited by everyone!
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 employees have equal access to the information and means that we aren’t printing packs of documents for each new member of staff.
Our servers are on site so they are powered via 100% renewable electricity.
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 designed a handy guide to be shared amongst crew.
You can read the latest guidance document here detailing policies and and recommendations to help camera assistants, producers and rental companies to adopt more sustainable working practices.
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 minimum environmental impact. Cables were sealed in single-use (once-opened) plastic sheathing until now.
Full supplier details of our paper labels, including size & supplier and also tubing supplier is here.
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 world landmine free by 2025. They cleared 100,000 pieces of ordinance during 2019 and as a result, the toll on innocent human beings being blown up reduced from 24 to 20, though it still meant that around 10 children were blown up daily.
We were going to show an image of the 4 riders arriving in Amsterdam (Steve Baxter, Barry Bassett, Ali Wildon, Darren Cock), but instead preferred to show this image instead, explains perfectly why we felt compelled to do this.
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, the vehicle incurs no congestion charge and this saving is passed on to customers.
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 health that the free biscuits that we used to buy everyone!
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 by 2025. All funds raised by our rides go towards MAG (Mines Advisory Group), a charity based in Manchester, UK. MAG go into places inflicted with conflict and find and destroy landmines, cluster munitions and unexploded bombs. Please read about them and support them directly or through our Superhero rides.
[Year 1 of the Superheroes ride arriving in Amsterdam. From left, Jay Odedra and Barry Bassett]
We consolidated seven separate servers into one more efficient server, saving the power to both run the servers and cool them. The project was innovative enough for Ealing Council to give us their Environmental Award! We save approximately 30,000KWH electricity annually.
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 quickly
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 hotter and hotter days in the UK, we are looking for more extensive cooling that is still environmentally-friendly. In the meantime, we’ve created workstations within smaller rooms in our warehouse so that staff can keep cool without refrigerating the whole warehouse inefficiently.
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 annual client satisfaction survey and act accordingly whenever we feel that we could do better. We publish our findings each year and since 2015 have never received lower than a 94% satisfaction rating from you for customer service!
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.
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, do not require adhesives and are manufactured in Luton.
We installed LED lights through our London facility. These offer a better quality of light, are less tiring to staff, as well as reducing electricity by approximately 90% and reduce our need for cooling. (Fun note: These were not readily available in 2012, so we imported the lighting fixtures directly ourselves from China.)
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%.
COVID briefly caused a reintroduction of paper towel usage this has now been halted.
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 to deliver pressurised air to the work benches which saves waste and delivery emissions.
We introduce 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 camera-floor employees started out as interns.
For reference, Jack Cherrington (right in image), started out as an intern back in 2015 and progressed all the way to senior technician, where he remained in post until 2021.
[VMI’s Internship intake 2015. From the left: Faith Glennister, Moses Fapohunda and Jack Cherrington]
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 bad) and always act on this. Eradicating single use plastic polybags from filters was one of these suggestions!
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 videos on many subjects too.
Our expert staff also make videos showing you samples of just what you can expect from a range of equipment. Learn & Help articles span a large number of subjects including lighting, data workflows, lenses, camera and cinematography.
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 the industry. Unusually for the time, these were freely available on our website for anyone to access.
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. Over 1000 people attended this course over the next few years.
We began running workshops to promote solid state production workflows to the industry.
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 promote new production methods.
As with many companies auditing their emissions, we know that Scope 3 can be tricky. But by 2026 it is our goal to have all upstream & downstream Scope 3 carbon emissions fully audited with changes made in suppliers to reduce emissions where ever possible.
We plan to have all Scope 3 emissions been verified and neutralised by us or by the stakeholder responsible for them.
We aim to reach Net Zero emissions in Scopes 1, 2 & 3 by 2030. This means that we will have reduced our emissions as far as technology allows and we will have offset any residual emissions that we can’t eliminate (yet!).
Celebrate the world achieving Net Zero and not surpassing 1.5°C global temperature rise and 20 years of Net Zero as a company thriving within the green economy.
…well, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of optimism!