Environmental & Sustainability Policy
Our commitment
Three 17 Limited, the company behind EducatedOn and AutomatedOn, is committed to operating in a way that minimises our environmental impact and supports the transition to a lower-carbon economy.
We are a small, digitally native software business. We do not manufacture physical products, operate a fleet, or run industrial facilities. Our environmental footprint is therefore concentrated in a small number of areas: the energy consumed by the cloud infrastructure that runs our platform, the equipment our team uses, business travel, and the operation of our workspace.
This policy sets out how we manage those impacts and what we expect of ourselves and our suppliers.
Scope
This policy applies to all Three 17 Limited employees, contractors and directors, and to all Three 17 products and services including EducatedOn and AutomatedOn.
Our principles
Understand before we claim. We would rather measure a small footprint accurately than make broad environmental claims we cannot evidence.
Reduce first. Our priority is genuine reduction in energy and resource use, not offsetting.
Choose suppliers well. The majority of our environmental impact sits with our infrastructure providers, so supplier selection is our single biggest lever.
Comply as a minimum. We meet all applicable environmental legislation and regulation as a baseline, not a target.
Cloud infrastructure and platform efficiency
The energy used to run the EducatedOn and AutomatedOn platforms is our most material environmental impact.
We host EducatedOn and AutomatedOn on Umbraco Cloud, which itself runs on Microsoft Azure infrastructure within the United Kingdom. Microsoft has matched 100% of its global electricity consumption with renewable energy (a milestone reached in February 2026) and has a stated goal of being carbon negative by 2030.
We take account of published energy and carbon commitments when selecting and reviewing infrastructure providers.
We design the platform to use compute efficiently — automation work is scheduled and batched where practical rather than run through continuous polling, and we review resource allocation periodically to avoid over-provisioning.
Efficient automation is itself a sustainability benefit for our customers: replacing manual, repetitive processes reduces printing, duplicated data handling, and travel associated with administrative work.
Equipment and e-waste
We extend the working life of IT equipment as far as is practical and secure, rather than replacing on a fixed cycle.
Equipment that reaches end of life is securely wiped and then reused, donated or recycled through a certified WEEE recycling route. We do not send IT equipment to landfill.
We favour suppliers who offer repairability, take-back schemes and credible environmental credentials.
Workspace and resource use
We operate a low-paper environment. Contracts, invoices and internal documentation are handled digitally by default.
We segregate and recycle waste at our workspace, and we avoid single-use plastics where alternatives exist.
We use energy-efficient lighting and equipment, and power down non-essential equipment outside working hours.
Travel and remote working
We support remote and hybrid working, which reduces commuting emissions.
We default to video conferencing for meetings, including customer meetings, and travel only where there is clear value in meeting in person.
Where travel is necessary, we favour rail over air and road for domestic journeys.
Suppliers and procurement
We take environmental performance into account when selecting significant suppliers.
We expect our suppliers to comply with applicable environmental law and to be able to describe their own environmental commitments on request.
Where a supplier publishes environmental targets or reporting, we take that into account at contract review.
Responsibility and review
Overall responsibility for this policy sits with Michael Sims, Managing Director. All staff are expected to follow this policy and to raise suggestions for improvement.
We review this policy at least annually, and sooner if there is a significant change to our operations, our infrastructure arrangements, or applicable legislation.
What we do not currently claim
In the interests of accuracy, we note the following:
We do not currently publish a measured carbon footprint or hold third-party environmental certification such as ISO 14001.
We do not currently operate a carbon offsetting programme.