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Other pages in this section:
Overview
Education
Sustainability
Environment Champions
Health & Safety
Charities
Constructing a sustainable future
The economics of good business co-exist with care for the environment - that's why we work in partnership to create sustainable opportunities in support and construction services.
Our commitment to collaborative working ensures we establish shared team goals that meet the delivery requirements of individual projects - and environmental objectives.
We continually improve our environmental performance in three ways:
- We work in partnership with our customers to deliver successful services while minimising adverse environmental impacts. This helps our customers comply with their responsibilities under legislation - and keep environmental promises they have made to their customers.
- We work with our supply chain partners to develop new techniques and new materials for sustainable construction.
- We encourage our people to continually innovate in order to develop new solutions to tackle the environmental issues that affect our daily lives.
Award winning approach
We've received a number of industry awards for environmental achievements while carrying out our work.
In October 2007 we received the much-coveted Best Practice Award at the British Construction Industry Awards - which are widely regarded as the construction industry's 'Oscars'. The award was for the use of more than one million recycled car tyres to create flood defences on the River Witham in Lincolnshire see pic above). Click here to read more about this award.
And in November 2007, we were once again successful at the Green Apple Awards, which recognise and reward environmental best practice around the world. (We were also successful at the 2006 Green Apple Awards.) This time round we received a silver award in the Building and Construction category for the design and construction of 9km of ductile iron pipeline in Devon for our customer South West Water. Click here to read more about this award.
And as part of the Team Van Oord partnership, we were Overall Winners at the 2006 Environment Agency Project Excellence Awards - and also won individual project awards for a flood defence scheme in Hampshire and a sluice improvement scheme in Somerset. Click here to read more about this award.
Best practice, every time
Our business practices, and our certification to ISO 14001 for environmental management, reflect the commitment we have made to uphold the highest possible standards. They include:
· Environmental impact assessments for all projects.
· Consistent application of the Waste Hierarchy. We redesign schemes and plan our working practices to reduce consumption, re-use or recycle surplus materials where possible, and minimise disposal to landfill.
· Incorporation of recycled materials from sustainable external sources.
· Maintaining project sustainability registers. We record the various options for methodology and material types, and monitor the results to inform future decision-making.
· Reference to the WRAP Toolkit, produced by the Waste Recycling Action Programme. It helps us identify where we can effectively make use of re-used and recycled materials.
· Staff behavioural training, so they can make the correct choices to achieve safe, environment-conscious service delivery.
· Established and refined procedures. We have a protocol of Alerts, Bulletins and other communications that notify staff of environmental best practices, and lessons learned from both inside and outside the company.
Environment Champions
In May 2007 we launched our Environment Champions pilot project at Head Office - with the help of Global Action Plan, an environmental charity that helps people make positive changes at work, school, and home.
The project promotes to employees the importance of reducing wastage and energy consumption. It identifies practical actions people can take, and encourages them to lead by example.
In the first few months Environment Champions achieved some remarkable results, including a 28% reduction in the amount of waste sent to landfill. As a result of the success of the pilot the scheme will be rolled out across the company during 2008.
Click here to read more about Environment Champions.
Other pages in this section:
Overview
Education
Sustainability
Environment Champions
Health & Safety
Charities
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