Key takeaways from our 2020 Sustainability Report
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As part of our sustainability commitments and evidence, we develop a yearly report outlining our efforts to improve our practices. In our recently released 2020 report, we cover every area of our business and its practices. For many businesses including ourselves, 2020 presented many new challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, our report also covers the ways we have adapted to face these new circumstances. Alan Dukinfield, our Commercial Director, explains how we’ve adapted and worked to limit our environmental impact.
To give you an insight into elements of our 2020 sustainability, here are 3 areas we have improved and expanded.
Zero Waste to Landfill
As part of our sustainability practices, we have always recycled and reused as much waste as possible. Alongside preventing waste from going to landfills where it can cause further environmental harm, our policy also helps the recovery of valuable materials. By recycling metals and precious materials, we help to limit the need to mine and extract virgin ore from the Earth.
In 2020 alone, the facility reported a total of 1,467 tonnes of material separated and sent to secondary processors p.14. Once sent to these processors, circuit boards are smelted to maximise the recovery of metals.
As part of this, we have measured the carbon emission savings of this process at 1,205tCO2e. These saved emissions are the equivalent of powering 145 homes worth of energy use for an entire year. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic having an impact on recycling rates across the UK, we did have a decrease of 600 tonnes of waste recycled. We plan to improve on this during the next few years, as business WEEE recycling increases post-pandemic.
We’re now measuring scope 3 emissions
To reduce our carbon emissions further, we have now extended the coverage of our scope 3 emissions p.16. Our scope 3 now includes all business travel, waste disposal freighting goods, employee commuting and water use. Because of these inclusions, our scope 3 emissions have risen, however, we will be working on these results in upcoming years to reduce them.
Along with upgrading our scope 3 reporting for last year’s emissions, we have also improved the way we measure emissions for vehicles and this has meant revised figures for 2019 as well. We are aware that our business travel generates the majority of our carbon emissions. Because of this, we have now calculated our travel emissions by the amount of fuel for company-owned vehicles instead of the distance travelled.
We hope that this will provide more accurate reporting of our travel emissions and help us to improve them in the future.
Introduction of homeworker services
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic affecting many of our client’s staff members. We adapted our services to include sanitised homeworking bundles sent directly to client staff stationed at home.
Using our specialist sanitation machine purchased during the start of the pandemic, we received, sanitised, and distributed over 1,000 homeworking bundles. This service was created to help our clients keep their workers safe when receiving IT equipment through electronic safe sanitisation.
Our sustainability in 2021
As we progress into the upcoming years, we will be continuing to optimise our services and processes. We will seek to limit our emissions as much as possible, working towards our goal of becoming Carbon Neutral by 2025.
