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Honda cleans up off the track
Friday 30 May 2008
The Honda Racing F1 Team may not be leading the way in the Constructors’ Championship, but they are ahead of the field when it comes to environmental issues.
This was proved this week when Honda was granted ISO14001 certification for its UK headquarters at Brackley, Northamptonshire. This is the first time a Formula One team has achieved ISO14001 certification and Honda is hailing the accomplishment as proof of its commitment to take action on the environment.
"Obtaining ISO14001 certification is not an easy thing for a Formula One team to achieve," commented Nick Fry, Chief Executive Officer of the Honda Racing F1 Team. "However, our earthdreams initiative is at the core of our team culture and it is important that we, like our project partners, strive to do our best to minimise our impact on the environment in the course of our business.
"This is a step along the way and there are many areas where we can continue to improve but it's very pleasing that our efforts have been rewarded by the respected ISO standard and that we met its tough criteria at our first attempt. We are showing that running a business that is as highly pressured as Formula One and doing the right thing are entirely complementary."
Honda has been working towards accreditation since 2005 and is now focussing efforts on reducing CO2 emissions - and although the F1 cars themselves might be thought of as the major concerns in this area, Fry explained that this isn't the case.
"Contrary to popular belief, the fuel that we use to race and test our cars forms around only 1% of our CO2 emissions footprint," he explained. "The vast majority is from power use at our factory and air transportation of people and equipment around the world. This gives us some formidable challenges to reduce our consumption but we intend to see the same technology and ingenuity that we deploy on our F1 car to make a worthwhile contribution to reducing our CO2 emissions."
(Pictured is Rubens Barrichello at the Monaco Grand Prix. Photo © HondaRacingF1.com)
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