Statement of Intent
Michael Hardy recognises it has a responsibility to the environment beyond legal and regulatory requirements. We are committed to reducing our environmental impact and continually improving our environmental performance as an integral part of our business strategy and operating methods and encourage our employees, customers and community to follow suit.
Responsibility
Michael Hardy is responsible for ensuring that its environmental policy is implemented understanding we all have a responsibility in each of our areas to ensure that the aims and objections of the policy are met.
Purpose and Scope
- Comply with all relevant regulatory requirements
- Continually improve and monitor our environmental performance
- Continually improve and reduce our environmental impacts
- Incorporate environmental factors into business decisions
- Increase employee awareness
- Increase awareness to our customers/contractors and community of our commitment to the environment (website, social media etc.)
- Encourage best practices at the office and home – i.e. can we do this at the office, can we take this and do it at home?
- To continually audit ourselves and improve, step-by-step and bite-sized chunks
What we are currently doing:
- We encourage using less paper and printing (double-sided printing, scanning etc.)
- We recycle paper, cardboard, glass and plastic
- We use energy-saving light bulbs
- We have hybrid and electric cars in our fleet
- Heating controls
- Lighting pollution controls at night – (e.g. our window display lighting shuts down overnight)
- Hot water tap on a timer
Other Considerations – recycle, reuse, reduce
- Transport
- cycle to work – electric cars, car miles vs. foot miles
- working from home – less pollution by less travel to work
- walking diaries – i.e. discourage the use of emission-emitting vehicles for viewings where possible to keep our carbon footprint as low as possible
- Printing
- limit the use and necessity of printed material
- Energy
- efficient use of water and energy
- Chemicals
- use of biodegradable chemicals
- minimising the use of solvents and lead-based paints
- phasing out of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting substances
- Training
- educating our teams on the negative environmental consequences of day-to-day practices and the ways to reduce them
Implementation Guidelines
- We will work to create tangible progress through a programme of incremental improvements within the company’s operations and activities, measured via corporate targets which will be reviewed regularly
Extending the scope of our policy
Our environmental policy doesn’t exist in isolation and we are extending the scope of our policy to cover corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainable development. Our extended policy acknowledges the fact that different groups of people rely on our business and aims to ensure we minimise our impact on the environment.
Our CSR policy shows we are:
- Dealing with suppliers and employees in a responsible way – for example by being open and honest about our products and services. It also means going beyond the legal requirements
- Good health & wellbeing: we provide healthy workplaces, encourage healthy lifestyles and raise awareness of mental health & wellbeing
- Decent work and economic growth: we are committed to operating responsibly and offering fair, safe and diverse workplace
- Quality education: we create opportunities for growth and development for our people and within the communities we operate
- Affordable & clean energy: we aim to maximise energy efficiency, minimise carbon emissions and set a goal to achieve net zero by 2030
- Building up a good relationship with the local community – (we support many local charities and sponsor and host local events)
- Minimising our impact on the environment and cutting pollution and waste – we do this already by the points listed above