ESG Carbon Footprint
Environmentally sustainability is at the forefront of what we do. We show this not only in our recycling practices, but also our position on ESG, found in our ESG outline, our commitment to limiting our impact on the natural environment, and the way we like to give back to the natural world.
All of our efforts in being a “greener” company are in pursuit of achieving the Carbon Footprint Standard. We’ve put a lot of time and thought into tracking, calculating and offsetting our carbon footprint, with plans to continue this self-evaluation and self-improvement as much as possible.
Carbon Footprint
STE Waste Management is proud to be partnered with Carbon Footprint, an organisation dedicated to assisting businesses with their carbon offsetting strategies. We’ve worked closely with them to explore ways we can calculate and track our carbon emissions, and ways we reduce them even more than we have already.
With this in mind, let’s talk about what practices we use to reduce negative impacts on the environment whilst providing our commercial and domestic waste services.
Commerical waste recycling
Recycling is at the heart of this team effort, ensuring that we contribute to the recycling of waste as much as we can. We pride ourselves on saying that over half of what we collect through our waste management services gets recycled, which just covers the broad work that we do.
Landfill is a big concern for environmentally sustainability, which is why we divert 100% of our recycled waste from landfill. But it’s not just where the waste goes, it’s what it’s made of that also matters greatly. 100% of our collected card and paper waste is recycled, which makes up a large majority of our collections during office waste disposal services, also done in a safe and secure way if any sensitive documents require disposal. In addition to this, waste electronics we acquire are also 100% recycled, which is tremendous for sustainability accreditations.
Trade waste collections and their carbon emissions
It’s not just our waste management services that reflect our stance on carbon footprint, but also our vehicles too. Our STE Waste Management trucks and how we use them have been carefully managed and optimised, to have a reduced impact on the environment without limiting our services.
We’ve invested a lot of time into choosing the right vehicles for the job, and ensuring that they’re suitable for our valuable work as well as our key messages. For instance, all trucks meet the Euro 6 emissions standards, this is a standard given to diesel vehicles that emit no more than 80mg/km of NOx gases, as well as petrol vehicles that emit no more than 60mg/km.
Aside from their specifications, we also carry this sustainable outlook on the way we use our vehicles. We use collection route optimisation strategies and software, which enable us to enhance our daily routes and maximise our efficiency. This also limits “ghost miles”, which are essentially wasted miles between two waste collection points. We avoid this by planning out a route that allows us to be quick and efficient with our services, minimising long stretches of time wasted to simply driving.
STE Waste Management giving back to the environment
Minimising our impact on the environment is a great way of promoting environmental sustainability, but to make this even better, we should offset whatever impact we do have by giving back to the natural world.
Part of our contribution has already taken place, through our 25,000 trees planted with the National Trust in the north west. While this was an amazing project to be apart of, our aim is to go even further, by planting an additional 5,000 trees to add to the total. These contributions are a great way of offsetting our carbon footprint, and we’re very happy to see the impact we’ve had through making them.
Final thoughts
Carbon footprint is always worth keeping in mind, not just for us but for all businesses and the public alike. We’re confident that we’re doing everything we can to position ourselves as an eco-friendly business, and we’re very proud of the sustainable practices and efforts that we’ve made so far, and hope to be an example of our a business can be environmentally friendly, without sacrificing productivity and valuable service.