Every year becomes more relevant and important - we’re all noticing the world around us changing because of global warming. And it’s important that we reflect on the progress we have made, and what is left to do.

At Startle, we hold ourselves accountable. We’re proud to have built our company with an incredibly low environmental footprint. We’re not perfect, but we’re making big strides to be as environmentally responsible as possible.

Here are the steps we’ve taken so far, both with our products and our team, with the environment front of mind.

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‍Ultra lightweight hardware. 

All of our music and technology is powered by the Startle Player, a very lightweight and energy-efficient mini computer. Not only is it incredibly efficient (drawing <2W of power), but it’s lightweight too (weighing < 250g) meaning its shipping footprint is tiny as well.

The Startle Player is unique in that it can connect with Sonos and Chromecast speakers. Compared to energy-consuming amplifiers that require lots of wiring and power, our player is miles more environmentally friendly (and practical too).

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No single-use plastic. Renewable energy. 

We've removed all single use packaging from our players. They come packaged in recyclable cardboard, printed with planet friendly inks.

And as a SaaS provider, we have servers that require power and cooling. We host these in secure data centres powered exclusively by 100% renewable energy.

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Power saving features and digital alternatives.

With our scheduler, customers are able to set opening hours. That means that not only do our players automatically go to sleep when you’re not using them, they can even turn your screens off at closing time (and back on again for opening).

Utilising your existing screens for digital signage already provides benefits over print promotional materials such as more control and more eye catching, but it can also be a great way to help reduce emissions associated with printing and posting physical point of sale materials.

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Sustainable Initiatives.

We teamed up with Octopus Electric Vehicles to launch an Electric Vehicle Salary Sacrifice scheme. The scheme allows our UK employees to lease an electric vehicle before income tax deductions. 

Over 40% of our team are now proud drivers of electric vehicles, meaning our personal environmental footprints are smaller too. 

Oh, and we’ve just planted our 15,000th tree. Pretty neat.

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Carbon neutral sourcing.

Perhaps the biggest activity we take part in to be more environmentally conscious is tracking our emissions across our entire supply chain.

We offset all emissions with Ecologi - the scope of this includes evaluating our direct emissions, indirect emissions, and value chain emissions. To us it is important that we measure, reduce and offset our emissions across all three scopes so that we fully understand our true environmental footprint.

We're also ISO 14001 accredited for our Environmental Management processes.

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Atmosphere.

Our newly launched Atmosphere product tracks environmental factors such as temperature which can help you determine if you're spending too much on heating/cooling your premises. This can not only help you with your energy bills, but help you be more environmentally friendly while also providing the optimum environment for your customers.

Knowledge is power - the more you can know about what’s going on in your venue, the better decisions you can make.

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No commuting.

We’ve always been a remote first team (even before it was fashionable). This provides flexibility to our team, but also a way for us to significantly reduce business travel. And it makes our team time together even more special. 

Our Ware office even has 18 EV car chargers for the large number of us who travel in electric vehicles, and the building is heated by air source heat pumps.

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So that’s just a few of the things we’re doing to keep Startle’s environmental footprint tiny. There’s always more we can do and we’re always looking to improve, but we think it’s a pretty good start. 

Happy Earth Day, and cheers to all the retail and hospitality brands out there making a difference! Together, we can create change for future generations.