ChipsAway Telford & Wolverhampton achieves carbon neutral status

The Telford & Wolverhampton branch of nationwide SMART (small to medium area repair technology) car scratch and bodywork repair specialists ChipsAway, has become the first of the franchise’s 200-strong network to achieve Carbon Neutral status. 

ECA Business Energy awarded the ChipsAway Car Care Centre at Queensway Business Park with the PAS 2060 Carbon Neutrality certification following an extensive assessment of its operations, and after it agreed to achieve a further two per cent reduction in its net carbon usage year on year. 

The awarding body currently helps 300 body shops across the UK to reduce their carbon emissions and offset the carbon used by the premises in order to help protect the environment, reduce energy and travel costs, avoid future carbon taxes and generate increased customer demand through greener working practices. 

The Telford & Wolverhampton Car Care Centre, owned by Darren and Matthew Fielding, was assessed over the course of several months to establish what contributes to the company’s carbon footprint today, and what’s contributed to previous years of trading – including expenditure on gas, electric, petrol and diesel as well as car repair parts. The branch’s total carbon usage was then calculated and offset against a renewable project taking part somewhere else in the world. 

Moving forwards, to achieve the Car Care Centre’s two per cent reduction in carbon usage each year, any new product, energy supply, vehicle or process must be assessed before being implemented or purchased to ensure it will help achieve that goal. 

ChipsAway Car Care Centres are local workshops which offer a convenient and cost-effective service, providing high quality car body repairs to minor automotive paintwork damage within a matter of hours and at a fraction of the cost of traditional body shop repair methods. 

Darren said of the certification: “This acknowledgement of the steps we are taking to reduce our carbon expenditure is testament to the hard work of our team to provide a greener operation. We know this is important to our customers, and it’s important to us too as we care passionately about protecting the environment. The fact that our expenditure is offset against a renewable project taking place what could be hundreds of thousands of miles away makes us feel like we are having an impact on a global level as well as locally, which is very important to us. 

“The application and assessment process was simple, and we encourage other Car Care Centres who want to demonstrate the steps they’re taking to create a more sustainable future to go through the process.”

Simon Kings, Technical Director of ChipsAway, said: “As a franchise network, we have a responsibility and a willingness to encourage all of our business owners to take steps to make their businesses greener. But in many cases, they go way beyond our support and take measures into their own hands. Such is the case for Darren and Matthew’s team, who’ve demonstrated as our first carbon neutral Car Care Centre that taking lots of small steps today make a huge difference in the long run. 

“We hope many more of our Car Care Centres and mobile repair workers will follow in the footsteps of our Telford & Wolverhampton branch because they are truly setting the standards for the rest of our industry.”