Sustainability Policy

Atkinson Contract Services is committed to managing our operations in a sustainable manner. We aim to follow and to promote good sustainability practice, to reduce the environmental impacts of all our activities and to encourage our clients and suppliers to do the same.

Objectives

Our Sustainability Policy is based upon the following principles:

· To maintain an Environmental Management System based on the requirements of ISO14001 in order to prevent pollution, continuously improve our processes and reduce our impact on the environment.

· To comply with, and exceed where practicable, all applicable legislation, regulations and codes of practice.

· To integrate sustainability considerations into all our business decisions.

· To ensure that all staff are fully aware of our Sustainability Policy and are committed to implementing and improving it.

· To minimise the impact on sustainability of all office and transportation activities.

· To make clients and suppliers aware of our Sustainability Policy, and encourage them to adopt sound sustainable management practices.

· To review, report, and to continually strive to improve our sustainability performance.

Practical steps

In order to put these principles into practice we will:

Travel and meetings

· Walk, cycle and/or use public transport to attend meetings, site visits etc, apart from in exceptional circumstances where the alternatives are impractical and/or cost prohibitive.

· Share transport where possible

· Include the full costs of more sustainable forms of transport in our financial proposals, rather than the least cost option which may involve travelling by car or air.

· Avoid physically travelling to meetings etc where alternatives are available and practical, such as using teleconferencing, video conferencing or web cams, and efficient timing of meetings to avoid multiple trips. These options are also often more time efficient, while not sacrificing the benefits of regular contact with clients and partners.

· Reduce the need for our staff to travel by supporting alternative working arrangements, including home working etc, and promote the use of public transport.

Purchase of equipment and consumption of resources

· Minimise our use of paper and other office consumables, for example by double-siding all paper used, by the use of electronic documents and by identifying opportunities to reduce waste.

· Reduce the energy consumption of office equipment by replacing equipment with energy efficient equipment and good housekeeping.

· Seek to purchase electricity from a supplier committed to renewable energy. Seek to maximise the proportion from renewable energy sources, whilst also supporting investment in new renewable energy schemes.

· Ensure that timber furniture, and any other timber products, are recycled or from well-managed, sustainable sources and are Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified.

· Replace company vehicles with more efficient models as they become due for replacement.

Working practices

· Use vehicles with low emission ratings for transport to deliver and retrieve goods from our clients sites, all vehicles have vehicle tracking and route planning to ensure the most efficient routes for deliveries and collections. Vehicles also carry spill kits in case of accidents.

· Through our Clear, Reuse and Recycle company we will as far as possible arrange for the reuse of our office waste, and when requested the waste of our clients, including paper, computers, electronic equipment, office furniture and other redundant equipment. To this end we are working with the Reuse Network, charities and schools to promote the reuse of redundant office furniture etc

· We recycle at least 99% (the remaining 1% being used for energy to heat) of any waste that cannot be reused and maintain records to verify the recycling of our waste and waste removed from our clients sites.

· Encourage our employees to undertake voluntary work with the local community and / or environmental organisations.

· Ensure that any contractors that we employ take account of sustainability issues in their advice to Atkinson Contract Services.

· Include a copy of our Sustainability Policy in our proposals to clients.

· Include achievement of our sustainability policy in our management reviews.