Letter from the founder
In 2020, Hertech was established as a female-led digital agency with a focus on positive change for both people and the planet. In the midst of the world’s increasing embrace of digital transformation, we acknowledge the significant responsibility that web developers hold in crafting a sustainable and resilient future.
Embedded in our values is a commitment to environmental stewardship, guiding us as we deliver top-quality digital products. Our aim extends to minimising environmental impact, ensuring product longevity, and fostering social change in all our endeavours.
This year, we are excited to kick off our application to attain B Corp certification, aspiring to join a community of like-minded businesses sharing our vision for a greener and more ethical future. Achieving all our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the year fills us with pride, and our dedication to sustaining this success in the years to come remains unwavering.
For a small company like ours, reaching these milestones establishes a robust foundation for future growth. Our commitment continues as we strive to transition into a 100% purpose-driven business.
Mission statement
Our mission is to champion sustainable web design practices that harmonise digital innovation with environmental responsibility.
Hertech is a sustainability focused company. Our key objective is to build sustainable and accessible websites with longevity and exceptional user experience.
We achieve this by implementing sustainable design and efficient coding practices, offering green hosting and subscribing to sustainable enterprises who actively promote positive change in the world. Our team is committed to staying up-to-date with the latest sustainability practices and incorporating them into all aspects of our work.
Company values
Knowledge – Learning from like-minded companies, we are dedicated to continuing our journey of sustainability and seeking guidance from leaders to learn more.
Community – Fostering collaboration with clients and external teams, we invest in community and support women in tech. We align ourselves with companies that share our values.
Environment – strive to continuously evolve in creating a greener and more sustainable internet.
KPIs
We are proud to have reached all our KPIs for 2023.
Environmental KPIs
Community and social impact KPIs
Diversity and inclusion
While hertech is owned and led by a woman from a minority background and with a women focused partnership team we decided to focus on diversifying our development partnerships. We were proud to collaborate with a new development partner in Bangladesh for our Website sustainability project.
We also screen our collaborators for social and environmental impact. We are proud to collaborate with other B Corp businesses like Sail Creative and Pretty Clever. All our design partners are focused on positive mission led clients some of which include: Care International, Rape Crisis and Oxfam.
Female owned | 57% |
Lgbtq | 43% |
Minority | 14% |
B-corp | 29% |
Underrepresented groups | 85% |
Banking
We are proud to use Starling bank as our sole bank for all of Hertech business.
Starling bank is an independently owned bank committed to serving the community. By banking with Starling we support the following initiatives:
Volunteering
In 2023, our goal was to identify a cornerstone charity to support in order to dedicate more time to volunteering. Hertech’s director applied, and was accepted, to become a trustee for The Line, an ambitious art project in East London with an outdoor exhibition programme that offers a journey through a dynamic urban landscape where everyone can explore art, nature and heritage for free.
We also joined Climate action.tech, a group of people that meet to discuss, learn and take climate action together.
Environmental business model
In 2023, we transitioned our business model to prioritize sustainability, as reflected in our mission statement and two key initiatives for the year. Going forward, Hertech is fully dedicated to developing sustainable websites powered entirely by renewable energy. Our commitment extends beyond internal energy reduction, as we recognize our measurable environmental impact through our clients, contributing to broad and positive change.
The first initiative was to start at home by working to Improve and monitor own website’s sustainability
Result:
The second, a much larger initiative, was to move 100% of our clients to green hosting
Result:
Benefits of our environmental product
Building sustainable websites that are 100% hosted on green energy has the following benefits:
Resource conservation calculations
Using available formulas supplied by the Sustainable Web Design organisation we are now able to calculate our carbon emissions savings combined with data gathered on our websites from Ecoping.
Using Ecoping’s estimations, Hertech’s websites have CO2 emissions of 85.36 kg per month or 1024.32kg per annum (1.024 tonnes). We can also verify, via Ecoping, that the average grid intensity for Hertech’s websites is 250 g/kWh.
If we follow Global average of grid intensity of 442 g/ kWh (that the Sustainable Web Design organisation provides), we can conclude that if we were on 442 g/kWh carbon intensity gird, our CO2 emissions per annum would have been 1.810 tonnes. By using green hosting our annual savings are 1.022.51 tonnes which is a 43.5% carbon emissions reduction.
By using green energy to power our websites, our annual savings are 1.022.51 tonnes which is a 43.5% carbon emissions reduction than the global average.
Section 4 – Clients
List of our clients that have a direct impact on social and economic problems that are faced by client beneficiaries.
Organisations | Purpose | Purpose driven orgs | Registered charity/NGO | B Corp |
Bluemark (making the mark) | Impact investing | Yes | Yes | |
Calyxia | Environmental sustainability | Yes | ||
Lankelly Chase | Charity | Yes | ||
ReLondon | circular economy | Yes | ||
Solar Energy UK | Renewable energy | Yes | ||
Stop financing Factory Farming (Friends of the Earth) | Environmental campaigning | Yes | ||
Thirty Percy Foundation | Charity | Yes | Yes | |
UK Trauma Council (UKTC) | Mental health | Yes | Yes | |
Children’s Burns Trust | Children’s health | Yes | Yes | |
Creative Access | Jobs for underrepresented groups | Yes | Social enterprise | |
National Suicide Prevention Alliance (NSPA) | Mental health | Yes | Yes | |
Minority Rights Group International (currently in development) | Support for underrepresented groups | Yes | Yes |
Benefits of services supplied to our clients to aid them in reaching their goals: