Our Commitment
Blacksmiths is commited to protecting the environment by reducing and managing our environmental impacts and mitigating and adapting our working practises in response to climate change. This policy applies to all Blacksmiths employees, associates and third parties who undertake activity for, and on behalf of, Blacksmiths. It also applies to the services we provide to our customers. All Blacksmiths staff members including associates, and third parties are responsible for ensuring that this Policy is adhered to.
Environmental Policy
Blacksmiths recognises that its activities impact the environment in several ways, principally through:
- Energy: including the heating, lighting and electricity we use in the buildings we occupy and when working from home.
- Business travel: emissions to air from any business-related travel.
- Disposal of information communication technology hardware (ICT): we have an obligation to ensure safe and secure recycling of IT assets in accordance with relevant regulations.
In recognising Blacksmiths’ need to reduce its environmental impact, it is committed to reducing its emission of greenhouse gases. The following actions will be taken to support this ambition, as well as its commitment to protecting the environment and continually improving its environmental performance by:
- Ensuring compliance with all relevant legislation and standards, and the expectations of our customers and other key stakeholders.
- Ensuring our systems and procedures prevent pollution.
- Ensuring our suppliers are able and are encouraged to support our environmental commitments.
- Ensuring we continually review how we can make improvements to our environmental performance.
- Continually improving our environmental management systems
Specifically, we will:
- Reduce energy consumption through staff awareness and improved controls.
- Encourage the use of public transport over personal car use where possible (and economical) to do so.
- Reduce business travel miles through awareness and implementation of improved journey planning.
- Reduce paper consumption through staff awareness and increased use of electronic communication and data storage.
- Frequently review our use of ICT hardware and ensure that all waste electrical & electronic equipment is reused or recycled where possible.
- Reduce the amount of waste produced by considering purchasing decisions, and whether items can be reused or recycled, before putting them into the bin.
- Utilise recycling facilities available to recycle as much of the waste we produce as possible.
- Work with our strategic suppliers to understand their environmental impact and support them to reduce.
To realise our environmental objectives Blacksmiths both recognises the need for, and is committed to, communicating our environmental commitments and performance to our staff team, associates, suppliers, customers and wider stakeholders. This is achieved via our procurement processes, and our existing communication channels to our staff.