Our Approach to Sustainability

Rutland Plastics endeavours to develop good relationships and strengthen communication channels with our partners and this is borne through our mission statement:

To work in partnership now and in the future with our customers to solve their problems through: Manufacturing Excellence, Technical Expertise, Growing our People, Taking Pride in Everything.

Rutland Plastics, its management and employees are committed to the adoption and promotion of sustainability principles across all company processes and we are firmly dedicated to conducting our operations in a socially responsible manner ensuring we provide a safe and sustainable environment for employees, customers, suppliers and stakeholders.

We aim to achieve sustainable, organic growth through continuous investment in people, equipment and facilities. We have been established for 65 years and are still a family owned and run business.

We strive to set a good example of sustainable manufacturing by fulfilling our financial, regulatory, environmental and social obligations and we are constantly evaluating compliance with our policies.

Rutland Plastics is part of the Made in Britain Green Growth Programme which is dedicated to helping its members become more sustainable, fit for the future and focused on achieving the UK's COP 26 targets which includes net zero by 2050. The Green Growth Programme uses the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 12 to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns as its foundation.

We aim to be a transparent and ethical business and endeavour to make a positive contribution to the community.

Our core values are:

• Taking Responsibility
• Working Together
• Having Pride
• Evolving
• Being Honest

We rely on the commitment and energy of our employees to help us achieve our sustainability goals. Communication enhances our ability to achieve our goals and effective two-way communication channels promote employee contributions, developing better work practices and enhances job satisfaction.

We employ fair, open and consistent recruitment processes and believe each employee should be treated with respect by management and colleagues.  Rutland Plastics is committed to ensuring there are no acts of modern-day slavery and human trafficking within its' business and that there is no use of conflict minerals in any process.

We implement policies to ensure the well-being of our employees. We invest in their development, providing comprehensive training with unrestricted learning and personal development actively encouraged and supported.  We have been accredited Investors in People since 1999.

We attach great importance to the health, safety and welfare our employees at work. One of our company values is Taking Responsibility which reminds us that health and safety is everyone’s responsibility and all employees have a role to play in ensuring that we all work in a healthy and safe environment. It is everyone’s responsibility to speak up if something isn’t right.

In all business activities, we give consideration to our immediate community location, the wider environment and its natural resources. We manage our production processes with careful concern for the environment. We recognise that our environmental sustainability efforts are one of continuous improvement and to date we are able to demonstrate our commitment through our self funded programme of:

• Generation of electricity from 900 (solar photovoltaics) PV panels which provides up to 25% of our electricity requirement.
• All of our purchased electricity is through the Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin (REGO) scheme.
• ‘Free air’ cooling systems utilising low external air temperature.
• Smart lighting combining LED and occupancy motion sensors throughout our site.
• Waste recycling on-site facilities and off-site partners.
• Reduction of paper waste generation through implementing ePayslips, office paper recycling, cloud-based storage and document sharing.
• On-site electric vehicle charging points and the company will only have electric vehicles in their fleet from 2022.
• Working towards the implementation of the bsi standard to prevent plastic pellet loss.
• We have held ISO14001:2015 Environmental Management since 2008