Our Commitment to Environmental Sustainable

OUR COMMITMENT TO ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ISO 14001

Steps to Work (Walsall) Ltd recognises that the environment is a major factor in determining the quality of life in and around the communities and areas in which it operates.

The Organisation is committed to environmental sustainability and aims to ensure that its activities do not cause pollution or have detrimental effect on the environment and the communities therein. Our approach continues to be to reduce the impact of our and our partners activities by placing the ‘Environment’ at the heart of our approach and the adoption of an Environmental Management System and objectives that are in line with the requirements of the ISO 14001 Standard.

Like all ISO management system standards, ISO 14001 includes the need for continual improvement of both systems and environmental matters.

The standard has recently been revised (ISO 14001:2015), with key improvements placing increased emphasis of environmental management within the organization’s strategic planning processes, greater input from leadership and a stronger commitment to proactive initiatives that boost environmental performance.

In recent times the Environmental, Health & Safety team (EHS) have placed considerable focus upon making the transition from the existing ISO 14001:2004 to the ‘new’ ISO 14001:2015. The new version of the Standard follows the ISO Annexe XL standard structure and will benefit the organisation by enabling increased synergy of the ISO standards that we hold.

This will simplify the audit process aswell as enabling greater integration of our management systems. It is anticipated that the updated system will be introduced in the 1st quarter of 2018-9.

In the past financial year we have continued with the approach of keeping environmental matters to the forefront of our considerations. In this time we have continued to place emphasis not only on reducing our negative impacts but also in line with the updated Standard looking at how we may capitalise on opportunities that arise from our approach to environmental management.

Commitment to the environmental policy and the management system that lies behind it comes from the leadership of the organisation and is cascaded down to all levels. Whilst the overall objective is not to create pollution we have focussed upon a number of key aspects that occur as a result of our activities and work to minimise any resultant negative impact or increase any positive impacts.

Particular areas of focus have included: • Energy & Natural Resources • Maintenance Activities • Waste Management • Procurement • Travel & Transportation • Nuisance In identifying the key aspects, some of which are identified above, we have considered what we need to do to meet our compliance objectives. This process requires a regular review of legislative, stakeholder, customer and client requirements to ensure our approach remains current.

In our activities we continue to encourage all to reduce their consumption of energy through the ‘better off’ campaign aswell as procurement of efficient electrical items in line with the Sustainable Procurement Policy and the implementation of an improved planned maintenance schedule.

Our increased emphasis on improving the management of waste has further been strengthened by the introduction of a Waste Management Policy.

This policy is designed to minimise disposal to waste and encourages; • Consideration of the waste hierarchy before disposing to waste • Better segregation of waste including the provision of improved facilities • Donation of surplus/excess furniture to other 3rd sector organisations

With increasing numbers of ‘distributed’ employees resulting in increasing use of vehicles and fuel we have placed greater emphasis on encouraging car sharing, use of public transport and cycling to work. Going forward we shall look to further encourage these positive actions to further reduce our ‘footprint’ by considering how we can better incentivise such behaviours.

Personnel will continue to be encouraged to contribute to the environmental performance through the provision of information, training and awareness sessions. Further communications takes place through the periodic environmental bulletins, team briefings aswell as via the environmental noticeboards that are located around the sites.

Our transition to the new ISO 14001:2015 will further improve the relevance and effectiveness of the management system and in this we shall continue to set objectives along with measurable key performance indicators. This process, which will continue in the future, will where possible be broadened to increase our measurability of performance so that we are able to further reduce our negative impact.