Environmental Policy

Updated: February 2024

Date of next review: February 2025

WCF are committed to undertaking all our activities in a way which minimises our impact on the environment and local communities. We always operate in compliance with legislation and utilise relevant best practice in our operations. We recognise that by meeting our obligations to detect and mitigate those adverse effects that our operations may be having on the environment, we can not only reduce our carbon footprint through reduced emissions, contamination, energy consumption and waste, but also provide our business with valuable commercial benefits and enhance our reputation with our customers, suppliers, employee owners and other stakeholders.

The key points of our environmental strategy are:

• Implement a rolling programme of planned maintenance, inspection and remediation on all our vehicles, equipment and properties using suitably qualified third parties;
• Use the best available technology to route our vehicles, measure route efficiency and reward our drivers for safe and efficient driving;
• Develop, test and maintain robust emergency and spill response procedures;
• Educate and inform our colleagues about any environmental issues which may affect their work on an ongoing basis;
• Encourage colleagues to adopt work-related practices which have positive environmental impacts, such as cycling to work and re-cycling;
• Evaluate commercial opportunities to switch to renewable sources of energy to power our properties and fleet;
• Evaluate opportunities to reduce our energy usage through investment in new, more energy efficient technologies and better communication with our team;
• Re-use and recycle where possible and encourage our customers to do the same;
• Eliminate single use plastic from our packaging;
• Avoid unnecessary use of hazardous materials;
• Use technology wherever possible to minimise travel; and
• Continuously benchmark and evaluate our operations to ensure that they are as efficient as possible.

As a large entity, WCF complies with the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (“ESOS”) and Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (“SECR”). We record and analyse our energy usage for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions and take the necessary steps to implement energy savings wherever possible. Through the above we hope to demonstrate our environmentally responsible credentials and encourage our suppliers and customers to follow similar environmental best practice. We have mapped our Scope 3 emissions using an external consultancy firm and are now working with them to understand and plan our own journey to net zero.