Here at Roman we have once again demonstrated our commitment to caring for the environment, as our recently ISO14001 audit showed some very successful results.
Ian Simpson, Health & Safety, Environmental & Facilities Officer, operating our Cardboard Compactor
We work hard at Roman to reach our environmental goals; our three main environmental goals are:
- Reduce energy consumed as a direct proportion of business activity
- Increase the proportion of recycled waste
- Eliminate and reduce any harmful emissions, discharges or pollutants generated by the business activity
BSI recently undertook an ISO14001 audit here at Roman and we have achieved some great results. BSI is the business standards company that helps organisations all over the world make excellence a habit. They show businesses how to improve performance, reduce risk and achieve sustainable growth.
The key achievements from our ISO14001 audit
- A reduction of energy consumption by 9%, with an estimated saving of £7000 per annum
- We have reduced our general waste by 60%, which in turn will save £5500 per annum in landfill and collection charges
- Our CO2 generation was found to have increased by 1.5% to 788 tonnes for their own vehicles
- The most impressive result of the audit was that our recycling of paper, card and plastic increased by an impressive 62%, providing added income of approximately £3300.
Roman loading cardboard packaging bales for recycling’
Future projects
Of course we now want to continue to improve on these fantastic results and will investigate opportunities of potential new green technologies and equipment, which could aid our reduction of our carbon footprint.
A potential project which we are currently looking into is investing £20,000 in new, factory wide lighting system. The idea of this lighting is that it will automatically dim when it is bright outside to reduce unnecessary energy being used.
Another potential venture to reduce the energy we use at Roman is installing solar panels to generate energy to then use for the factory.
We currently have up to four tonnes of wood waste per week and we are researching into how we can recycle and dispose of this wood in a cost effective way.
For some more Green Facts about Roman you can have a look at our Ecodentials page.