Design, build, and operate

INDIGO is committed to helping the environment. We offer our clients sustainable infrastructure design and operation solutions and work with partners that can help us meet our carbon footprint reduction goals.

Making eco-design a priority

Light shafts, natural ventilation, landscaping, green areas, preserving biodiversity – our Technical Department and its in-house engineers include all these aspects in every new car parking infrastructure they create.

For its new parking structures, INDIGO integrates the environment into its design criteria, taking into account the context in which it is located. Natural lighting, natural ventilation, landscaping, planting, biodiversity preservation… are elements taken into account by our technical department and its in-house design office. Vegetation, for example, contributes to thermal regulation, improves air quality and protects the soil. It can be used in the immediate surroundings of the car park, on roofs, in window boxes and plant walls or in skylights. In Bordeaux, for example, the Ars-Belcier car park is an “eco-designed” car park: it offsets part of its greenhouse gas emissions thanks to a green roof and a rainwater recovery system on the roof terrace has been installed. In addition to offering a soothing environment, this car park was designed as a place of socialising accessible to our employees who have made it their vegetable garden. All these elements were integrated from the design stage of INDIGO infrastructure projects to change our relationship with the car park.

When designing and constructing works with INDIGO, we carry out projects with a positive ecological impact in city centres that consist of planting plants and creating spaces that promote biodiversity. These combine aesthetics and resilience to meet the increasingly demanding and varied climatic conditions. For example, in Bordeaux, we have installed more than 1,200 varieties on the roof of the Ars car park.

For the Dieppe City Hall square redevelopment project, we have created an area of vegetation with a dense nature belt both to help integrate the surface car park into the landscape and also to increase the site’s biomass and biodiversity, limit the heat island phenomenon, develop the site’s capacity to store carbon, improve air quality, and so on. We have also planted Laricio pines in the car park patios and shady, cool vegetation.

Beyond the ecological benefits of this type of project, these natural areas also require much less maintenance and serve as true sanctuaries for biodiversity. It is also a question of initiating a new way of looking at nature and the services it provides us…

Yannick Ferry, Urban Landscaper, Co-founder of Atelier Lignes and Atelier des Cocottes Urbaines

Building to last

In order to reduce the carbon footprint of each new car park, INDIGO is working with the largest car park constructors: Bouygues Bâtiment Ouvrages Publics, VINCI Construction, Briand, etc. Their CSR policy is one of the Group’s selection criteria, always with the same objective of limiting the impact of its activities on the environment throughout the value chain. These take into account the various dimensions of the worksite: preserving the ecosystem, using less polluting materials, managing and reusing materials and waste, saving resources, limiting nuisances, including a monitoring methodology for ensuring compliance with good practices.

For all our construction projects, we give priority to prefabrication work in our factories, enabling us to better control the quantities of materials and the quality of the work. We try to build as dry as possible with elements that are assembled and bolted together, with the aim of reducing the quantity of concrete used and its implementation on site. For our structures, we use steel that is 70% recycled. Thanks to a very fine calculation of the quantities of materials and our specific manufacturing processes, we manage to save 30% in greenhouse gas emissions in our environmental and health declaration sheet compared to conventional methods. The car park under construction at CHU Amiens-Picardie, which is being built in partnership with INDIGO, incorporates all these optimisations and is designed so that 50 to 60% of its structure can be dismantled and reused.

On the other hand, we contribute to the creation of local jobs through the location of our factories, which are 100% French. Finally, with a view to continuous improvement of our CSR, we are aiming for the Lucie 26 000 label.

Jean-Christophe GALLISSOT, Deputy Subsidiary Director Design & Build, Groupe Briand

Eco-friendly car park management

Minimising electricity consumption

INDIGO has implemented a series of measures to minimise the electricity consumption of its car parks, in particular by controlling the lighting station (low consumption lighting installation, presence detectors, live monitoring of consumption by operating staff, etc.).

Measuring air quality

In France, INDIGO goes beyond the regulations by voluntarily equipping air monitoring systems that trigger mechanical ventilation in enclosed car parks with less than 500 spaces, open to the public and managed for its own account if regulatory thresholds are exceeded. In addition, in these car parks, systems have been set up to renew the air in the levels at least once a day. The operating offices are equipped with an overpressure device to prevent the ingress of exhaust gases.

Sustainable cleanliness

In 2012, INDIGO has deployed an “Eco-sustainable Cleanliness” charter that lists good environmental practices, such as the use of eco-labelled cleaning products or the use of washing equipment that consumes little product and water (recycling waste water during the operation of scrubbers for example).

Paper use

INDIGO has taken a range of measures to promote the sustainable use of natural resources:

• Printing of parking tickets by printers in the Imprim’Vert® network
• Dematerialisation of documents with new software to avoid paper printing
• Use of theINDIGO Neo application, a 100% digital parking payment solution

Recycling

INDIGO pursues a recycling policy coupled with social and solidarity actions, such as the recycling of fluorescent tubes used for car park lighting or the collection of batteries used in parking meters. In Lyon, the “Ateliers de l’Audace” employ people in rehabilitation to repair and recycle INDIGO Weel bikes so that they can be reused in social projects. In the subsidiary managing the car parks at La Défense, operating waste is collected and sorted by an adapted business. In Brazil, work clothes are recycled or transformed into bags, kits and other objects. At the head office, it is the computer and telephone equipment that is recovered by a social and inclusive company that employs a majority of disabled employees and is responsible for giving it a second life.

Greening service vehicles

In 2020, INDIGO has implemented a new policy to favour 100% electric service vehicles. For its parking control activities, the French subsidiary Streeteo mainly uses electric vehicles (90% of its fleet).

A sustainable procurement charter

Over the years, INDIGO has forged fair, lasting, rewarding, responsible relationships with its suppliers and service providers. The products and services we purchase meet ethical principles that we hold dear – business ethics, respect for the environment, compliance with international conventions on labour law and human rights. In 2021, we reformed our supplier performance charter and expanded our commitments beyond the scope of our own operations. We want our suppliers to integrate our sustainability approach into their CSR policies, so that together we can offer our clients the most efficient and responsible solutions.

Two ISO 140001 certified entities in France and Spain.