Our environmental commitment

The construction industry is one of the world’s largest consumers of energy and raw materials. In the EU, construction is responsible for around 40% of CO2 emissions and nearly a third of all waste. With that in mind, our industry has an important responsibility to implement policies and practices which reduce waste and carbon emissions throughout the supply chain.

Industrial Textiles & Plastics (ITP) Ltd have a well-established commitment to environmental responsibility and our local community. We have developed policies and strategies with key objectives to maintain environmentally friendly working practices and to minimise the environmental impact of our activities.

We perform all operational activities and maximise pollution prevention in a manner that balances environmental considerations, quality, cost-effectiveness and the views of our community, customers, employees, suppliers, regulatory bodies, and other interested parties. We manage every aspect of our business to carry out our environmental responsibilities, meeting and exceed the requirements of legislative and regulatory bodies.

Our management team shares the responsibility for environmental management with all colleagues who in turn all have a responsibility to continually improve our environmental performance.

KEY OBJECTIVES

Our policies and practices are designed to serve a range of key objectives:

• Raise employee environmental awareness and encourage action in both the workplace and at home.
• Minimise the impact of raw material use and waste through careful design, contract specification and process control.
• Minimise emissions through careful design, contract specification and process control.
• Monitor and minimise energy consumption.
• Continue landscape and architectural improvements in line with environmental best practice.
• Engage with communities in advocating and actioning environmental commitments.

CORE MEASURES

At the core of our environmental commitment, we have introduced a range of core measures and processes designed to reduce waste and carbon emissions:

• We minimise waste in production by optimising production runs and raw materials.
• We separate and recycle production waste where possible.
• We separate and recycle general waste (eg card board, film, packaging, aluminium, glass, paper) where possible.
• We convert waste to energy for all production waste that cannot be recycled.
• We use energy efficient lighting in production facilities and offices.
• We use electric forklift trucks.
• We have installed electric charging points for vehicles on site and use electric company cars.
• We minimise use of packaging.
• We use packaging made from recycled materials.
• We optimise packing of pallets to maximise transport efficiency and minimise CO2.

ITP introduced a recycling and waste management programme in the summer of 2022. During the first 12 months of the programme, we manged to recycle 38% of all our production and office waste. The rest was converted from waste to energy, meaning zero waste went to landfill.

ITP Managing Director, Marc van der Voort, said:

“Achieving zero waste to landfill was a key target within our environmental policy and we were delighted to achieve it in the first year of our recycling and waste management programme. It forms part of a wider strategy and marks the first stage in an ongoing process to eliminate waste and continually reduce our carbon emissions. Almost all our Powerclad scaffold sheeting products are made of 100% polyolefin which can be fully recycled or used for waste to energy, not only supporting safe working practices in construction but also contributing to CO2 emission savings.”

In working towards continual improvement in their environmental performance and carbon reduction, companies operating in the construction industry can make a huge difference in tackling climate change. ITP have adopted that approach as part of our sector’s collective responsibility.