Going Green as a Business feat. Ecosurety

One of the aims of our “Featuring Green Tech” initiative is to educate businesses on how they can operate sustainably and ways that they can introduce and improve their green operations, regardless of the sector in which they operate, to contribute to an eco-friendly environment.

Here at ADLIB, we take going green seriously. To name a few, we have: installed a filtered water tap to deter the use of single-use plastic, we are working towards being completely paperless (we’re nearly there!), we recycle all food, plastic, cardboard, tin, electronics, toner cartridges and more. Additionally, we fill the office with plants to clean our air.

But are we all, as a collective, actually doing enough? What are the best practices and how can businesses optimise their processes as much as possible?

In this context, we caught up with Ecosurety; a leading producer responsibility compliance scheme for packaging, WEEE and batteries making a real impact on UK recycling.

ADLIB: For some background information, who is Ecosurety and what makes your business offering unique?

Ecosurety: Ecosurety is a market-leading environmental compliance scheme working with more than 1,000 members, including brands such as Danone, The Co-operative Group, Nestlé, Morrisons and Virgin Media. We help them comply with the UK regulations for packaging, batteries and electricals – it is a little-known fact for consumers that if a company puts any of those materials onto the market they are probably required by law to register with the Environment Agency and pay a significant proportion towards the costs of recycling them.

We proudly stand apart from other compliance schemes, however, as we are committed to reducing the environmental impact of UK businesses and actively support efficient and more transparent investment in UK recycling projects via infrastructure, innovation and consumer awareness campaigns, on behalf of our members.

ADLIB: Can you share a few key areas where Ecosurety has seen the most success/made the biggest impact?

Ecosurety: Undoubtedly the biggest impact we have made over the last few years is to commit ourselves to walk the talk, going beyond offering a basic service to ensure we make a tangible, positive impact on UK recycling.

It’s easy to pay lip service to environmental issues, and so many companies do, but when you actually stand up and make a tangible difference it gets noticed. In this way we’ve been able to bring many major brands along with us on our journey, resulting in further investment in new recycling innovation and technology, not to mention unprecedented industry-wide collaborations on campaigns to improve on-the-go recycling such as our latest initiative Swansea #InTheLoop.

ADLIB: From your perspective, what can businesses be doing to make themselves more sustainable and reduce their impact on the environment?

Ecosurety: Seek out those areas where you can go beyond the basics – and don’t give up at the first hurdle. A good example is that one of our biggest environmental impacts as a service-based company is from our staff commuting to work.

Back in 2015, we were trying to set up a car share scheme on our local business park, Aztec West, where up to 8,000 employees travel every day. The commercial schemes were prohibitively expensive, but after meeting with the local council we sparked an idea that led to a collaboration which saw us create our own bespoke solution called joinmyjourney.

Four years later and it is now being used at over 30 sites across the South West to help employees commute to work by car share, cycling or walking at no cost to the organisations.

ADLIB: Can you tell us of any exciting green tech businesses that you’re working with?

Ecosurety: We go out of our way to work with exciting green tech businesses! Through our investment in recycling innovation, we are working with a number of key partners. These include Recycling Technologies who have developed a chemical recycling process in the UK that can ‘recycle the unrecyclable’, such as crisp packets and plastic wrapping, turning it back into a raw material that can be used to produce virgin quality plastic.

We are collaborating on another project called PolyMet with Impact Solutions which aims to remove the colour from waste plastics, potentially transforming it from a low-value waste stream to a high-value resource. Another recycler we support is Indigo Environmental who have developed a new plant to recycle contaminated plastic materials that traditionally end up in landfill or incineration.

There are many more examples, some of which we aren’t allowed to talk about yet!

ADLIB: And finally, what’s in the pipeline for Ecosurety? What’s on the horizon?

Ecosurety: We have some genuinely exciting times ahead of us, thanks to several key initiatives that are set to take our green credentials and impact to a whole new level. Unfortunately, they are top secret whilst we bring them to fruition, so we can’t go into any details right now. We are very excited that 2020 is already shaping up to be a big year for Ecosurety!