Rob Ferris, MD, Feritech Global
It’s now six months since HRH The Duke of Kent opened our new £3m Innovation Centre so it’s a good time to take stock and reflect on how we are doing. One of our ambitions is to become an exemplar for businesses working towards a Net Zero economy. So let’s stand back and look at how far we have come already on our journey towards sustainability.
When we were planning the construction of our purpose-built Innovation Centre near Falmouth, we wanted to take a radical approach to environmental sustainability. We were on a mission to prove that our industry can work in harmony with the natural environment, as well as pioneer sustainable new ways of working,
Here are 16 exciting steps we have taken so far:
- We harvest our own water, from boreholes that we have drilled ourselves as well as collecting water from the roof.
- We have a state of the art solar roof, combined with on-site power storage. This generates than enough electricity for our needs and the surplus is ‘exported’ to the grid. We make 3 times more power from our solar roof than all our manufacturing consumes.
- We use air source heating for our offices and we use heat exchangers to reduce power for heating.
- We have planted over 3,000 trees, to help our site blend with its rural location and promote biodiversity.
- We provide vital new habitats for wildlife at our pond, which captures the surface run-off from the site.
- We carry out our own recycling on-site, including the composting of food waste from our catering facilities.
- We have taken a novel approach to the fencing and windbreaks around the facility. Rather than metal fences, we opted to plant 5,500 hawthorn bushes. What these provide is a natural, growing impenetrable fence as well as habitats for local flora and fauna.
- We cause no noise or light pollution. The building has been built so that no noise escapes the building. And there are no external lights, so there is no light pollution.
- We have installed six 22kW Electric Vehicle Chargers at the site for staff to use free of charge and a ‘cycle to work’ scheme.
- We have created an outdoor green leisure area where staff are encouraged to rest and recharge in nature.
- We are engaged in a project to create a woodland area for the local community. This will provide a new green public space for our local village of Stithians. It will promote biodiversity and extend the environment-friendly ethos of the company across our wider community.
- As a global company with customers in over forty countries worldwide, we seek to minimise our impact on the environment. Whenever possible, staff always use ground transport instead of air.
- We offer flexible working for staff wherever possible.
- We recruit young people locally. We are working with Falmouth Marine School to develop our own apprenticeship scheme so that we can recruit locally and ‘grow our own engineers.’
- We actively engage with local schools for tours and visits to help get young children fired up and enthused for engineering and show how business can work successfully in harmony with the natural environment.
- We source as many components as possible within the UK. This is not always possible due to global supply chains but ensuring what we do procure is ethically sourced is paramount. We have policies in place that are supplied (and actively managed to all our suppliers) to ensure anti bribery, child working and modern day slavery do not get employed within our supply chains.
We are so proud that we have been able to take these innovative steps at our flagship Innovation Centre but this is only the beginning. We are now looking into becoming a B Corp business and our staff are being encouraged to consider how we can achieve still more in terms of our sustainability. As a ISO14001 registered company, we will continue to track our performance and constantly strive to reduce our environmental impact.
Working in harmony with the environment is at the heart of our approach.