Our Green Initiatives
Reducing the amount of paper used
With the help of our customers, we’ve made big strides to reduce the hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper generated each month to our customers’ mailboxes.
- In 2009 as part of our Green Initiative, we introduced a free paperless eDocuments service that enables customers to receive all their policy documents and bills by email. With the thousands of customers signed up, we’ve already saved over 150,000 pieces of paper and this number is growing each day. Sign up today!
- For new customers we’ve introduced a fast and easy eSignature service, so they can choose to sign and save their application documents online (and not receive it as bulky mail). We’re saving over 10,000 pieces of paper every month!
Going paperless in the office
Every piece of policyholder correspondence gets scanned at Plymouth Rock. This allows us to keep every document about your insurance policy electronically (versus rows of filing cabinets). Over the years, this change revolutionized our ability to keep your information at our fingertips without keeping multiple copies in different files, folders and storage.
Recycling
Employees have embraced recycling and it’s become a seamless part of working here:
- Plymouth Rock takes advantage of Hewlett Packard’s recycling program. All used cartridges are collected from every printer to get recycled, as well as computer equipment.
- Battery recycling is made available.
- Bottle caps are recycled (learn more about this neat program below).
- Paper cans are at printers and at all desks in the company.
- Aluminum and plastic are collected in all kitchens.
Saving energy in the office
Plymouth Rock kicked off an energy savings program in 2010 where light sensors are being installed throughout our offices; this effort continues to roll out in 2011 in addition to installing more efficient lighting.
Using certified paper when possible
Since 2008, we’ve been using Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified paper for many of our publications. The FSC is an organization that helps corporations make better decisions about the natural resources used in the course of running their businesses.
Cultivating green partnerships
Plymouth Rock is proud to have Clean Ocean Action as one of the charities under our Pledge of Assurance. Clean Ocean Action is a leading national and regional voice which works to protect waterways, research ocean pollution issues, and formulate policy and campaigns in active response to these issues. In 2009, Plymouth Rock and its employees participated in Clean Ocean Action’s plastic caps recycling program — and have been participating ever since! We’ve collected over 40,000 plastic caps in total and continue to do so every day.
Green Tip – Did you know that the majority of plastic bottle caps don’t get recycled? During recycling, caps are sorted from the bottles and discarded as garbage. If a cap doesn’t come off a bottle during compression, the entire bottle is discarded as trash. Often caps wind up as litter or trash and end up in landfills, beaches, rivers and oceans. Birds and other marine creatures mistake them for food with tragic results. How you can help: Collect your bottle caps and take them to local recycling centers or businesses (such as Aveda and Whole Foods) that collect them.
