As an organisation, we’re proud of our long-standing commitment to minimising our ecological footprint. We are working towards achieving net zero emissions, focusing on constantly finding new ways to protect our planet by reducing the impact of our operations.
We recently held our internal Company Update, which gives our team members the latest information on everything we’re doing across our business. As part of this update, we have some new information on our environmental initiatives to share.
At our Radstock factory in Somerset, we have installed 400kWp of solar roof panels. Since 2014 this system has generated 3.06GWh, or 3.06 million kWh of electricity. To put that into context, that’s enough energy to print over 150 million sheets of A4 paper, or to boil over 800,000 kettles.
As a direct result of this, in August of this year, our solar power provided 17% of our electricity needs. Thanks to our continuous drive for efficiency, the total electricity used at our Radstock site has reached the lowest levels ever recorded in recent months, with our consumption at around half of what we were using in a typical month in 2011.
As part of our commitment to driving sustainability, we regularly review our production processes across all our manufacturing sites to ensure that they’re running optimally and identify room for future improvements.
The improvements that have come from this process include the switch to inkjet printing, high efficiency inserting systems and our new platemaking system, all of which have seen our electricity consumption continue to fall.
We also operate a zero waste to landfill policy. This means that all of our general waste is sorted and recycled, with any remainders sent to a specialist company to extract useful materials and incinerate what’s left, to create energy.
We’ve held our ISO 14001 Environmental Management certification with an integrated Environmental Management System (EMS) since 2010, which forms the essential foundation for our long-standing commitment to eco-friendly operations.
This framework helps us to achieve our environmental goals by streamlining operations, reducing the time it takes to complete work, the resources needed to work, and the waste produced from the work. This certification also helps us to shape our thinking on all internal decisions with an emphasis on the environment first.
Recently our management systems underwent an external recertification process, which we are proud to say received a completely clean bill of health.
As paper is a huge part of the work we do, it’s essential that we prioritise responsible sources, and show a genuine commitment to sustainability. We source all our paper responsibly and are proud to have the approvals of both the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Programme for Endorsement of Forests Certification. We also recycle offcuts of paper through our trim extractors across our manufacturing.
Over the last 20 years we’ve planted 115,000 trees in the UK and given away thousands of saplings to customers, exhibition attendees and staff. As trees are both the cornerstone of what we produce, and absorb carbon dioxide, we have a duty to go above and beyond when committing to sustainable practices.
With the environment at the heart of all the decisions we make here at CFH, we strive to continue to operate in the most sustainable and responsible ways possible. As we continue to evolve our processes across all that we do, we thank all our customers for choosing a solution that’s committed to protecting our planet.
For more information on our environmental policies, you can view our Carbon Reduction Plan here.
