Environment

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At Sandtoft, we are committed to achieving environmental excellence and to reducing the environmental impact of our operations.  We are driven, not only by legislative changes which we always better, but by the belief that we have a responsibility to act decisively to protect our environment for future generations. 

 

The main focus of our environmental activities is to reduce our carbon emissions to help mitigate climate change. Carbon dioxide, released into the atmosphere primarily from burning fossil fuels, is the main contributor to global warming, representing  80% of greenhouse gas emissions from industrialised countries.

 

Here are some of the key areas in which we think we are making a difference:

Despite an almost tripling of electricity costs over several years, we have now committed to using 100% green electricity for our entire operation from October 2006.  From that date, all of our production facilities will use electricity generated from green sources such as wind farms and hydro-electric plants.  We also pledge that we will not pass on any of the premium we will pay for this carbon neutral power, and instead we will accept lower profits.

 

We have been investigating running our vehicle fleet on bio-diesel for some time, but have met resistance from vehicle manufacturers.  Bio-diesel offers serious benefits: it is produced from UK-grown oilseed rape supporting UK farming and reducing transportation costs; and on combustion, bio-diesel releases back into the atmosphere carbon absorbed during plant growth, whereas mineral diesel involves the release of carbon otherwise permanently locked within the earth’s crust.

 

Despite the fact that Rudolf Diesel invented the diesel engine to run on vegetable oil, we have been repeatedly told by vehicle manufacturers that diesel engines could only be warranted to run on a 5% blend of bio-diesel.  During our research, we discovered that some manufacturers were warranting cars in Germany to run on pure bio-diesel with only minor alterations to components such as fuel filters.  Armed with this evidence, we have managed to persuade a major car manufacturer to agree to do the same for Sandtoft.  We now aim for all our new cars to run on either 100% bio-diesel or bio-ethanol, or to be low CO₂ hybrids.  We are also working with several other manufacturers towards converting our existing fleet of cars to 100% bio-diesel.

 

Conscious that we are an energy intensive business, we take very seriously the targeted reductions in CO₂ emissions per tonne of product produced as set by the Government under the Ceramic Industry’s Climate Change Agreement.

 

6 years into a 10 year scheme, we are already close to achieving the final targeted level of emissions and have yet to experience the full benefit of some actions already taken.  We therefore expect to significantly exceed the targeted reduction over the 10 year scheme life – a clear demonstration that Sandtoft intends to take the lead on such matters.

 

 

Some roof tile manufacturers put forward the environmental benefits of feeding crushed concrete waste back into the production process.  We disagree with this school of thought.  Compared particularly to concrete blocks, roof tiles have a very shallow cross section which will not support the input of large pieces of waste.  Roof tiles also serve an aesthetic purpose, and the result is that any input waste has to be crushed and graded to sizes of no more than 5mm.  As one might imagine, this requires both an extremely high energy input, and the fabrication of specialist heavy machinery.  So rather than feed our waste back into production, we break it up into a coarse 40mm grading and supply it for use as hardcore.  Our waste still substitutes for primary aggregate, but with a much lower energy input. 

 

Perhaps more important than the destination of our waste however, is that we take all possible measures to minimise its creation.  Our people take enormous pride in continually driving down waste, with strong competition between plants.  We believe that the waste levels in our main concrete factories, now running at an all time record of around 0.2%, are amongst the best in our industry worldwide.

 

Working with our renewable technology partner, solarcentury, we can now offer an advanced solar solution with high output solar electric (C21e) and solar thermal (C21t) tiles that reduce the carbon dioxide emissions from housing and commercial developments. A house using these tiles integrated into the roof, can supply the home owners with two thirds of their domestic hot water needs and half their electricity. Once installed, a photovoltaic roof can prevent over 34 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions during its lifetime. 

It is our hope that other companies in the building industry will follow Sandtoft’s lead, particularly in the field of green energy, so that, collectively, we can make a significant contribution to reducing CO₂ emissions.