Our commitment is to:
- Continuously improve our environmental performance and integrate environmental management best practice into our practice operations;
- Reduce our consumption of resources and improve the efficient use of those resources;
- Measure, review and take action to reduce the carbon footprint of our practice activities to meet our objectives and targets;
- Manage waste generated from our practice operations according to the principles of reduction, re-use and recycling;
- Manage our practice operations to prevent pollution;
- Give due consideration to environmental issues and energy performance in the planning and design of buildings, urban design and landscape design;
- Ensure environmental, including climate change, criteria are taken into account in the procurement of goods and services;
- Comply as a minimum with all relevant environmental legislation as well as other environmental requirements to which the practice subscribes;
- Aim for certification to ISO 14001.
To meet our commitments we will:
- Provide management oversight and review environmental policies and performance, and allocate resources for effective direction and implementation;
- Set and monitor key objectives and targets for managing our environmental performance at least annually;
- Communicate internally and externally our environmental policy on a regular basis, and encourage feedback;
- Communicate the importance of environmental issues to staff;
- Work together with our staff, professional colleagues, and suppliers to promote improved environmental performance;
- Promote consideration of sustainability and environmental issues in the services we provide to our clients;
- Review our environmental policy regularly.
In order to ensure the achievement of the above commitments, Ian Ritchie Architects has implemented an environmental management system which satisfies the requirements of BS EN ISO 14001:1996.
Environmental objectives should be established early with a client in order to address particular sensitivities and provide an agreed reference framework for the designers.
Ian Ritchie Architects has been committed to an environmentally sustainable design approach since the practice was established in 1981. Our projects testify to our philosophy not to waste and to construct buildings that optimise carbon free energy and minimise energy bills.
We investigate and assess, and when appropriate, embrace the latest advances in engineering and environmental technology which are intelligent and relevant.
Since 1990, we have sought to use materials and products that use less energy in their manufacture and use and which require little or no maintenance. Well before sustainability was on any government agenda, Ian Ritchie was lecturing on the subject using his own projects as exemplars, beginning with low-cost, self-construct, passive and active solar energy housing (Fluy 1976; Eagle Rock House 1981). We also designed a zero energy cultural greenhouse (theatre/exhibition space), France 1993 which was the only building finalist in the global Design Sense
Award sponsored by Corus and the Design Museum.
Ian Ritchie chaired the launch of the first global book on sustainability, Blueprint for A Green Planet by Seymour, Girardet and Penney’s, at The Ecology Centre, London, 1987.
