Martin Malone from Zurich speaks to Julie Blackburn after the company won the Sustainable Business of the Year award at the 2023 Media Isle of Man Awards for Excellence
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00:00 I'm with Martin Malone from Zurich who has won the Sustainable Business of the Year award.
00:06 Now Zurich has been firmly established on the Isle of Man for more than four decades
00:11 but you have become actually a real leader with what you've done with your building specifically
00:18 in the sustainable arena. Do you want to tell us a bit about this?
00:22 Yes, so I think it starts with the Zurich Group. So the Zurich Group has a target to be net zero by 2030
00:32 and that filters down right throughout the whole group.
00:36 But the Isle of Man office is quite leading the way in terms of the initiatives that we've delivered.
00:41 For example, the biggest one being the solar array. So we built a new office in the business park.
00:48 We have this huge car park and realised that this was a waste of space. We built a frame and put a solar array on top of the car park.
00:56 Now that produces in the summer months all of our electricity and we give back to the grid.
01:01 And during the winter months about 50-55% of our electricity. So a large proportion of our electricity.
01:06 Which is just incredible but at the same time we've actually reduced our internal consumption of electricity by about 25%
01:15 through initiatives such as smart lighting. So when it's really sunny outside we have intelligent lighting that actually reduces the power to our LED lights.
01:25 We've done simple things like washing cups in the kitchen and pantry. We recycle all of our waste.
01:34 We've reduced the amount of water that goes into the cistern. Now we've saved 231,000 litres of water a year when people flush the toilet.
01:42 We've reduced paper consumption to almost nothing within the business. And we're continuing to do that.
01:50 We're looking at our whole business. And it actually filters down to the people who are up in business.
01:54 Because we see how much work goes into it. So they're really engaged with it now.
01:59 And we're constantly pushing the agenda of sustainability. Zurich are giving industry loans to people who want to create a house and put solar panels on.
02:08 It's something that's ingrained in the business and it's becoming ingrained in the staff.
02:13 And I'm really passionate about the environment. I swim in the sea. I'm always outside.
02:18 So to work for a company who has sustainability really as part of everything that we do is so important to me as well.
02:24 Congratulations. Good work. Well done.
02:28 Thank you.
02:30 [END]