Our purpose is to design products and service that are better for our clients, their users and importantly, the planet. Increasingly, we have promoted good eco-design principles and practices in both the content of our work and the way we work across all our sectors. In addition, as part of our role as an industry leader, we communicate our knowledge, vision and opinion on sustainability through concepts, conference papers and articles.

As well as improving the environmental profile of the products we design for our clients, we acknowledge our own environmental responsibilities in the way in which we operate our business.  We have tracked our total carbon emissions on a quarterly basis since 2012. This includes monitoring emissions generated from staff travel, deliveries, waste disposal and utilities. Pre-pandemic, we had already seen a reduction of about 60% compared to the previous five-year peak. These improvements were largely achieved through limiting flights, a transition to sustainable electricity providers and measures to reduce overall power usage in our offices.

Our Co2 impact continues to fall post pandemic, as we adapt to dramatic changes in global business practices. Without compromising on project efficiency and quality of work, we are successfully replacing many face-to-face meetings with online interaction tools and, although we do expect business travel to increase as we adjust to the new status quo, we have committed to carbon offsetting all flights and hotel usage.

Because DCA provide design services to some of the world’s largest companies, by far the greatest impact we can have towards improving the planet is through the products we develop for them.  We seek to develop successful product solutions that not only meet our client’s commercial objectives but help them to meet their ambitious environmental commitments.

These sustainability improvements are delivered through a variety of eco-design tactics, such as more responsible materials selection, system streamlining, component reduction and improvements to product packing density.  In some cases we are breaking new ground and helping our clients to define entirely new product categories that specifically address major environmental benefits.