January, 27th, 2022

We are working hard to make the HS Butyl business as sustainable as possible. But what does that mean and what does that look like?

Of course, we are certified to ISO 14001:2015 the international standard that specifies the requirements for an environmental management system that an organization can use to enhance its environmental performance. But the commitment to sustainability goes further than box ticking. It goes to the heart of what we do.

We started our sustainability journey ten years ago, concentrating on the three pillars of sustainability – environment (planet), social (people) and economic (profit), and are interdependent and interconnected. Our ambitions are to reduce emissions, diminish our impact on the environment, and improve our efficiency while supporting our team and the local community.

Over that time, we have invested significantly in both time and money to change the way we work, upgrade machinery, and adopting new technology to build towards our green targets to reduce our carbon footprint.

Some examples of how we have improved the sustainability of the HS Butyl business:

• We work closely with our suppliers and have audited internal processes in place to maximise the recycling of our packaging.

• We make sure that none of our waste goes to landfill

• We only use renewable energy to power our operations: By switching our electricity consumption to 100% renewable sources last year we have reduced our CO2e emissions by approximately one million kilograms.

• We have invested heavily in the last ten years in new production equipment that is both more energy efficient and as well as more effective in manufacture leading to reduced wastage.

• We are investing in more energy efficient premises to reduce our energy consumption and even contributing to energy production with solar panels on our roof.

Another important pillar of our sustainability policy is the way we treat our people and the local communities they live in. Being a family firm, it’s natural for us to put staff welfare at the heart of what we do. We try and be as flexible as possible with our workforce – more important than ever in the current health climate. As the pandemic took hold, we put in place safe working protocols, safety equipment, and new procedures to keep everyone safe when they returned to work. That happened in a phased, planned way until we were back at full capacity.

We are lucky enough to be based in the New Forest, one of the most beautiful parts of England and our Corporate Social Responsibilities are central to our operations. In the last years we have contributed to many local causes – from sponsoring football teams to acting as mentors for students at local colleges.

Improving a business’s sustainability is a bit like the Forth Bridge – never ending. Our efforts are ongoing and while we cannot claim to be perfect, we certainly take our environmental responsibilities seriously. Our latest initiative is to fit energy usage monitoring instruments on our production processes so that we can always ensure that we are working at optimum efficiency.