Imvelo

At Edwards Commercial Cleaning, we’re committed to reducing our environmental impact and making more responsible choices across our business. But meaningful progress starts with understanding where you are and where you can make a change.

We’ve been working with environmental consultancy Imvelo to measure our carbon footprint, identify opportunities for improvement and turn our sustainability ambitions into practical action.

Following a 15.2% year-on-year reduction in our gross carbon emissions, we caught up with Imvelo’s Founder Tamma Carel, to talk about how our partnership began, the changes we’ve made together and why sustainability is a journey of continual improvement.

How did Imvelo first start working with Edwards?

I first met Paul through a business programme called Towards Net Zero, where I delivered sessions on carbon management, what Net Zero means and how businesses can communicate their environmental performance responsibly. After the programme, delegates could access one-to-one mentoring with the speakers, and Paul asked me to be his mentor.

He wanted to measure Edwards’ carbon footprint so that we could establish a baseline, understand how the business was performing and identify opportunities to improve.

I always say that before you can improve something, you need to understand where you’re starting from. We began collecting data from across the business and that helped us decide what to prioritise.

Single-use plastics were a significant area because of the volume of disposable cleaning materials used across client sites. Travel was another important consideration, given the nature of the business. That initial work gave us the foundation for the changes Edwards has made since.

What changes have made the biggest difference to Edwards’ environmental performance?

For me, one of the most positive changes has been the way Edwards has reviewed its cleaning processes and reduced the resources needed to deliver an excellent service.

When we looked at what the business was buying, where people were travelling and what was being thrown away, we could see opportunities to reduce unnecessary purchasing and waste. Disposable products can seem like the cheapest option, but businesses need to consider the cost of buying something and the cost of disposing of it. Edwards has introduced refillable cleaning solutions and concentrates, which means fewer containers are needed and much less plastic is discarded.

The business has also been making a gradual transition towards hybrid and electric vehicles. What’s important is that these are changes to the way Edwards operates every day. They’re not simply initiatives that sit within a sustainability report.

What do you think has made the partnership between Imvelo and Edwards work so well?

Paul is incredibly passionate about sustainability, and he’s open to being challenged. I can say, 'I think we should collect more data' or 'I think we should look more closely at this area' and he’s willing to explore it. That doesn’t mean Edwards can implement every suggestion immediately. What matters is the shared long-term vision and the desire to keep doing better.

What is the next stage of our sustainability journey?

We’ll continue to measure Edwards’ carbon footprint and look for opportunities to improve. Transport will remain an important area. I also think there’s a really exciting opportunity for Edwards to share what it has learned. When a business has made progress with its own environmental performance, it can use that experience to influence its customers, suppliers and other organisations it works with. Many of Edwards’ clients have their own sustainability ambitions. By sharing knowledge and working together, businesses can make a much greater difference.

What would you say to another business that wants to improve its environmental performance but doesn’t know where to begin?

Start by understanding your business and the environmental legislation that applies to it. When an organisation approaches Imvelo, I need to understand how that business operates, where its environmental impacts are and what opportunities exist to make improvements. An important part of that is understanding its legal obligations. 

Environmental legislation can be difficult to navigate. That’s why I developed iCOR, an online environmental compliance platform designed to make this information more accessible and useful to businesses. It helps organisations understand which legal requirements apply to them, what they’re already doing correctly, what evidence they need to demonstrate compliance, and where there may be gaps that require action. The aim is to take environmental legislation and legal registers out of complicated spreadsheets and turn them into something people can understand, manage and use in their day-to-day operations and decision-making.

And how does iCOR work alongside the sustainability consultancy you provide through Imvelo?

I see iCOR as the step before Imvelo. Every business needs to understand its legal obligations and how its operations measure up against them. iCOR helps establish that starting point.

Once a business understands where it stands and has addressed any compliance gaps, we can look at what going beyond those requirements might involve. That’s where the wider consultancy work comes in. Through Imvelo, I can work with an organisation to understand its environmental impacts, measure its carbon footprint and develop a practical improvement strategy.

Whether a business is just beginning its sustainability journey or looking to build on work it has already done, the important thing is to start with a clear understanding of where it is today. From there, you can make informed decisions about where you want to go next.