Environment

Helping You Meet Your Sustainability Targets

Recycling is a key element in operations across the Restore Group of businesses, and we are conscious of the impact we have on the environment.

In 2017, for instance, we...

– shredded 80,000 tonnes of paper
– produced 505,000 paper briquettes for manufacture into paper products
– recycled 450,000 IT assets
– sent 1.2m cartridges for re-manufacturing
– recycled 1,330,000 cartridges

In turn, we support our customers by helping you to:

• make more efficient use of office space and public service facilities by storing documents in remote premises
• speed up access to important stored documents through file tracking software and scan-on-demand services, while saving on vehicle journeys
• reduce your carbon footprint, for example by designing and implementing a digitisation programme whose aim is to radically reduce paper use, and increase your recycling targets so that none of your old documents find their way into landfill
• Restore Harrow Green and Restore Technology – IT Lifecycle Services both provide ways for you to contribute to charitable causes through donations of furniture, IT equipment and payments in lieu of cash-back programmes
• Restore Datashred’s online customer portal supports an environmental feature that tells you how much paper you’ve recycled, how many trees you’ve saved from being felled, and how much water and energy you’ve saved, for each transaction you make.

Meeting our own sustainability responsibilities

We are currently migrating all our facilities to a mix of ultra-low wattage LED lighting, very slim T5 fluorescent tubes, and PIR sensors, while we have modernised ambient machinery to make sure we meet the correct storage conditions for your archive documents and tapes more quickly, more efficiently – saving electricity and keeping costs low.

A further initiative that has sustainability at its core is the bio-energy scheme at Bentwaters Park near Ipswich that provides local power for local people, including two of Restore’s high-security storage facilities. The energy plant has a 3.8MW rating, which refers to the amount of electricity it produces every hour. This is enough power to fuel over 2,000 households for a year and we are pleased to be connected to this source of ‘dark green’ energy.

The Carbon Trust

To establish and strongly grow our environmental work, a number of years ago we undertook a wide-ranging consultancy with The Carbon Trust. This consultation resulted in a detailed, 10-point action plan in which we committed to work through the trust’s recommendations of, for example, replacing older lights with LED, using more energy efficient units for our air-handling equipment in deep storage sites, and moving to low-carbon solutions for our gas-suppressed areas. You can find out more about how we are keeping our promises, and more, by viewing our sustainability and renewable energy pieces on these pages.

www.carbontrust.com

PlanetMark™

Five years ago, Restore Harrow Green signed up to this certification programme that recognises commitment to continuous improvement and good practice in sustainability. PlanetMark™ measures our carbon footprint and environmental performance in areas such as vehicle fleet performance, electricity and water use, and helps us engage with our teams and suppliers to drive improvements through.

On the last reported year – May 2016-June 2017 – Restore Harrow Green achieved a 19.3% carbon reduction per employee over the previous period, and a total carbon footprint decrease of 6.8%, and were given stretching targets to beat for the current year.

The most recent PlanetMark™ report is here.

Greener Transport

Here’s what we do as a matter of course at Restore Records Management to keep our emissions down across the business:

• FORS Bronze accreditation
• We run a fleet of vehicles fitted with current technologies and regularly monitor their performance against carbon footprint and running cost parameters.
• We use the latest generation telematics systems that give our team full visibility of journey times and routes. This ensures that drivers choose the quickest, most economical ways of reaching their destination and helps reduce emissions and fuel consumption.
• We keep our drivers up-to-date with driving best practice so that they use vehicles in the most fuel and environmentally efficient way possible, eg, implementing a ‘no idling’ rule.

At Restore Datashred, our fleet managers have rationalised a number of aspects about their 300+ fleet.

• They’ve calculated overall fuel consumption benefits from using smaller vehicles and have, accordingly, downsized their 18- and 7.5-tonne vehicles to 12 and 5.2 tonnes.
• In just over a year’s time, the entire diesel fleet will comply with the Euro 6 standard so that they meet the Ultra Low Emission Zones (ULEZ) standards set by the government.
• The team is aiming for FORS Silver accreditation, which carries an additional requirement for reports on fuel consumption and emissions.
• The business has been awarded Gold Fleet status by Masternaut, the telematics software company, for their environmental performance, placing Restore Datashred firmly in the top 2% for fleet management, nationally.

Greener Security

Racks of archive boxes full of paper and rows of computer tapes represent a significant fire hazard. Water is not an option because of the collateral damage it causes, which is why a top class fire suppression system is an essential component in our arrangements to offer the best protection and security for our customers.

We are proud to use Inergen™ Premier as the inert gas in our fire suppression system. We chose it as it fits in with our aim of having as small a carbon footprint as possible.

Here’s why:

• Inergen™ Premier is proven effective on all common types of fire
• It does not leave behind harmful decomposition agents
• Stored as a mixture of 52% nitrogen, 40% argon and 8% carbon dioxide, these are all gases naturally occurring in the atmosphere. The addition to the mix of the CO2 helps compensate for the depletion of oxygen levels and has been proven to have medical benefits
• Last, but not least, Inergen™ Premier has zero impact on the ozone layer and is the ‘greenest’ fire suppressant available.

Our Archive Boxes

Double-walled, easily assembled and with a long shelf life, our strong archive boxes use material that’s 70% recycled – the maximum amount of recycled material usable to maintain that strength – along with FSC-certified, responsibly sourced raw material. When each box has reached the end of its long life we send them off to be turned into toilet, paper, carpet and cling film rolls.

www.shop.restore.co.uk