Rutland Plastics joins the Green Growth Programme

Rutland Plastics joined the Made in Britain group in 2021 and has now become a member of their Green Growth Programme. The Programme 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. One of the greatest global challenges is to integrate environmental sustainability with economic growth and welfare by decoupling environmental impact from economic growth and doing more with less. Resource decoupling and impact decoupling are needed to promote sustainable consumption and production patterns and to make the transition towards a greener and more socially inclusive global economy.

Here at Rutland Plastics, we have been working on our sustainability journey for several years and we are on course to produce our millionth kWh this year from our solar panel installation. 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 provide up to 20% 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.
• Investment in new, more efficient moulding machines and ancillary equipment.
• Working towards the implementation of the bsi standard to prevent plastic pellet loss.
• We have held ISO14001:2015 Environmental Management since 2008