Environment

Environment

Looking after growth logoEnvironment

Restore Investors

Helping Our Customers Reduce Their Carbon Footprint

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 them 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 their carbon footprint, for example by designing and implementing a digitisation programme whose aim is to radically reduce paper use, and increase their recycling targets
  • Restore Harrow Green and Restore Technology – IT Lifecycle Services both provide ways for customers 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 customers how much paper they have recycled, how many trees they have prevented from being felled, and how much water and energy they have saved, for each transaction they make.

Case Study: The Francis Crick Institute

Working to achieve our customers’ goals

The challenge: setting up a supply chain to renowned scientific and academic organisation, the Francis Crick Institute, housed in a state-of-the-art facility in a heavily restricted zone in central London.

The solution: by managing all the institute’s physical deliveries at our own centre in Rainham, Essex, we have significantly streamlined the number of daily vehicles to the Kings Cross-based building.

The results: an innovative supply chain solution that reduces carbon output, costs and congestion while maintaining an excellent, personalised, level of service

What our customer says: “Restore did an excellent job in developing an extremely comprehensive specification against our tender. Having a reliable and fast-acting supply chain manager is crucial to supporting a collaborative and open culture that builds links between the institute, the wider scientific community and the general public.”

Take a read of our corporate responsibility story in our special magazine here.

TFCI logo

the Carbon Trust

The Carbon Trust

To establish and strongly grow our environmental credentials, a number of years ago we embarked on a wide-ranging consultancy with The Carbon Trust. This initiative resulted in a detailed, 10-point plan of action where we committed to working 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 upholding our commitments, 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.

PlanetMark™ logo

Renewable Energy

Renewable Energy

A strong initiative that has sustainability at its core is the bio-energy scheme at Bentwaters Park near Ipswich whose anaerobic digesters provide local power for local people, including two of Restore’s high-security storage facilities. The machinery is fed on a mix of vegetable and maize silage and apple pressings sourced from within a five to ten-mile radius of the site, and they produce three sources of energy.

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.

Sustainability

We aim for 0% landfill

A large part of our Group services involves disposal, from office-sourced paper and other materials, to end-of-life archived box contents, to IT equipment and office furniture. We are in the business of managing the forward motion of data and location cycles – without just throwing it all into landfill.

Energy conservation and the prevention of pollution are key considerations within our operations.

We work hard to:

  • reduce consumption of materials and promote re-use and recycling, including furniture unsuitable for redistribution
  • achieve ongoing improvement in environmental performance and minimise the impact of our operations on the environment
  • minimise the impact of our buildings, structures and operational plant by reducing visibility and noise

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.