Eco Insight Driving Carbon Consciousness for Customers & Colleagues

22 April marks International Earth Day, and the theme for 2025 is OUR POWER, OUR PLANET.

To mark Earth Day, Head of Sustainability James Vance explains how Unipart’s innovative Eco Insight tool is not only helping our customers to reduce their energy consumption, but also to reduce carbon emissions across our own estate, and promote carbon consciousness for Unipart colleagues, customers and suppliers along the way.

“Sustainability is at the forefront of Unipart’s strategy for growth, set out in the Unipart Way Forward Plan. At the heart of the Sustainability PDM is our Net Zero Carbon target which the business is aiming to achieve for all three carbon scopes by 2040.

“Achieving ambitious targets such as these may seem daunting for many companies, which is why our Eco Insight tool is so valuable. It provides a user-friendly platform to monitor energy usage, and real-time data insights that help to raise awareness of energy use and identify trends that can be quickly actioned to optimise energy consumption.

“Recently we held a series of workshop events at some of the earliest Unipart sites to adopt the technology. Each session involved senior sponsorship, local site ownership, a facilities lead and expert input from the Sustainability team.

“The team from Instrumentel, who developed the platform, were also present, enabling the opportunity to demonstrate how best to interpret the data and to collectively see what other opportunities lie in wait!"

Regional Environmental Manager Joanna Reed was involved in events at Cowley, Honeybourne and Nuneaton.

“It was invaluable for the Instrumentel team to give an expert demonstration of the technology and for the site teams to have the opportunity to ask them questions and develop our understanding - knowing what we are looking for, how to interpret the data and take action as a result.”

“As just one example in Honeybourne we identified an energy spike that was occurring during the night when the operation is not running. This has enabled us to look for the root cause and put steps in place to rectify the problem.”

Head of Logistics, Planning & Support at the Cowley site, Brian Doran took part in an Eco Insight workshop incorporating both the DC and Unipart House.

“We identified energy usage in a part of Unipart House in a tenant shared area where air conditioning was not required due to occupancy level changes. This one area is estimated to make a saving of £9,000 and 37,000 kW of energy this year!”

“It's great to be able to see timelines of energy usage for our operation. We’re now using this data to ensure areas are being powered down at shift end to minimise out of hours consumption.

“This is a real time saver for us as prior to Eco Insight we would be reliant on physically going to areas to check things are switched off, and makes the whole process more efficient and streamlined.

“Going forward we will use this data to engage the teams on the shop floor to do their bit, as it really brings to life how the small actions we can each take really do add up. We’re also looking at how we recognise and reward our teams with the best ideas to reduce our energy consumption across the DC, linking in to the ‘Respectful Ways of Working’ element of the CARE framework.”

“Since its launch, Eco Insight has so far helped customers identify actions to prevent 198.4 tonnes of harmful co2 emissions from entering the environment (that’s the equivalent of planting 7,937 adult trees!).

“Eco Insight is also a vital tool which is helping our own business progress our carbon reduction journey with the ultimate aim of reaching Net Zero Carbon by 2040.

“Eco Insight has so far enabled us to deliver savings of over £100k across our own business, with over £130k of further potential savings identified through the recent workshops.

“The next step is to continue rolling out the technology to all of Unipart’s viable sites to deliver further cost savings and demonstrate our commitment to sustainability on a global scale, so exciting times ahead.”

Scope 1 relates to the direct emissions from our owned/leased assets such as the diesel in our vehicles and gas to heat our buildings, Scope 2 relates to the indirect emissions from the use of purchased electricity (i.e. the electricity we use in our buildings) and Scope 3 relates to the indirect emissions in our supply chain including the in-use emissions of the products and services used by our customers.