Environmental and Sustainability Policy

1. Commitment

Featherstone Safety Ltd is committed to complying with applicable environmental legislation, to preventing pollution, to minimising the environmental impact of our operations, and to improving our environmental performance over time in a way that is proportionate to the size of the business.

We have made the SME Climate Commitment through the SME Climate Hub, recognised by the UN Race to Zero: to halve our greenhouse gas emissions before 2030, reach net zero before 2050, and disclose our progress each year. How we intend to get there is set out in our Carbon Reduction Plan.

2. Our impacts

We are a consultancy and software business with no manufacturing, no warehousing, no fleet and no industrial processes. Our material environmental impacts are:

• Business travel, principally car journeys to customer premises, which is our largest single impact.
• Energy use from computing equipment and the workspace we operate from.
• Cloud computing, the energy and carbon footprint of the data centres our suppliers operate on our behalf.
• Consumables and equipment, principally IT hardware, paper and printed training materials.
• Waste, principally paper, packaging and end-of-life electronic equipment.

3. What we do

• Deliver remotely by default. Assessments, reviews, training and meetings are delivered remotely where doing so does not compromise the quality of the work. Site visits happen when seeing the workplace matters, which for health and safety work is often.
• Combine journeys where more than one customer visit can be made in a region, and plan routes to reduce mileage.
• Operate a digital-first product. Featherstone Safety Hub replaces printed risk assessments, paper checklists, printed training records and folders of paper evidence with digital records. Reducing our customers’ paper use is the largest environmental benefit our business produces.
• Avoid printing. We work from digital documents and print only where a customer requires a paper copy or a site requires one.
• Extend equipment life by using IT hardware for as long as it remains serviceable and secure, and dispose of end-of-life electronics through a licensed WEEE route rather than in general waste.
• Segregate waste for recycling where facilities allow.
• Consider environmental factors when choosing suppliers, including the published environmental position of the cloud providers we rely on.

4. Pollution

We are committed to preventing pollution. Our operations are office- and computer-based, so our direct pollution potential is very low, but the areas below are assessed and the position recorded so that it is a considered judgement rather than an omission.

• Air. We operate no combustion plant, no process emissions and no refrigeration or air conditioning containing F-gases. Our only material contribution to air pollution is vehicle emissions from business travel, addressed in our Carbon Reduction Plan.
• Water. We make no trade effluent discharge and no discharge to controlled waters. Our water use is domestic-scale sanitary use only.
• Soil and land. We store no fuels, oils or chemicals in bulk, operate no site with contamination potential, and undertake no ground works.
• Living organisms and food resources. Our activities do not involve agriculture, food production, food handling or the release of substances capable of affecting food chains.
• Substances of concern and of very high concern. We use no substances subject to UK REACH authorisation or restriction in our operations. Where substances of concern are relevant to us, it is indirectly, through the electronic equipment we buy. We manage that through purchasing equipment from mainstream manufacturers subject to UK RoHS and REACH obligations, extending equipment life, and disposing of end-of-life equipment through a licensed WEEE route rather than general waste.
• PFAS and persistent organic pollutants. We neither manufacture nor knowingly purchase PFAS-containing or POP-containing products as such. The realistic exposure for a business like ours is again in electronic equipment, where fluorinated compounds and brominated flame retardants are commonly present. Our controls are the same: buy from compliant mainstream manufacturers, keep equipment in service for as long as it is serviceable, and route end-of-life equipment to a licensed WEEE handler so that those substances are not released through landfill or uncontrolled disposal.

5. Biodiversity, conservation and ecosystems

We occupy no land of ecological significance, undertake no development or ground works, and operate no activity capable of directly affecting habitats or species. Our relationship with biodiversity is indirect, through the supply chains of the equipment and services we buy and through the carbon we emit.

• Land habitat degradation — no direct impact. We occupy existing built premises and take on no undeveloped land.
• Desertification — no direct impact. Relevant to us only as a consequence of global emissions, addressed through our Carbon Reduction Plan.
• Soil sealing — no direct impact. We construct nothing and pave nothing.
• Deforestation — our only meaningful lever is paper. We work digitally by default, print only where a customer or site requires it, and our product exists to replace paper-based safety records.
• State of species — no direct impact from our activities.
• Invasive alien species — no direct impact. We move no soil, plant material, aggregates or equipment between sites capable of transferring species.
• Impacts and dependencies on ecosystem services — our business has no material dependency on ecosystem services beyond those common to any office-based activity. We have not carried out a formal ecosystem services assessment and do not claim to have done so.

6. Water and marine resources

• Water withdrawals and consumption — mains supply for domestic-scale sanitary and kitchen use only. We abstract no water and operate no water-intensive process. We do not currently meter or report water consumption separately, and we do not claim to.
• Water discharges to water bodies and oceans — foul drainage to the public sewer only. No trade effluent, no discharge to surface water, no discharge to sea.
• Habitat degradation and pressure on marine resources — no direct impact. We use no marine resources and our activities create no direct pressure on them.

7. Waste

We segregate waste for recycling where facilities allow, and we classify the waste we produce so that recyclable material is separated from general waste rather than being disposed of together. Our waste streams are paper and card, packaging, and end-of-life electrical and electronic equipment.

End-of-life electronic equipment is passed to a licensed WEEE handler. Where we use a commercial waste service, we use one authorised to handle the waste types we produce, and we comply with our duty of care under section 34 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, including keeping waste transfer documentation.

8. What we do not claim

We hold no environmental certification. We are not certified to ISO 14001. We do not yet measure or publish a carbon footprint, and we do not describe ourselves as carbon neutral or net zero today. We would rather say so plainly than imply an environmental standard we have not reached.

The SME Climate Commitment is a public pledge recognised by the UN Race to Zero. It is not a Science Based Target validated by the Science Based Targets initiative, and we do not claim SBTi validation.

We are below the thresholds for Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting and for the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme, and we have no reporting obligation under either.

9. Responsibility and review

The director is responsible for this policy and for its implementation. It is reviewed at least annually, and whenever the business changes in a way that affects its environmental impact. Where a customer or tender requires environmental information we do not currently hold, we will say so rather than estimate.

Questions about this policy can be sent to thomas@featherstonesafetyhub.co.uk.