Energy Use and CO2
The discovery, development and manufacturing processes are all intensive users of energy in the form of gas, electricity and steam. Laboratories and offices, for example, require heating and lighting, but a significant energy requirement relates to the movement of air in laboratories, specifically, fume cupboards. This relates to safety and cleanliness requirements. In production, energy is needed for chemical reactions and processes such as drying and milling.
Transport
Due to the size of the organisation, the primary source for environmental impact relating to transport is from travel to work and business-related travel. In a year, we typically travel approximately 50 million business miles by air and 30 million business miles by road. It is estimated our employees travelled over 6 million miles to and from work.
We estimate that our total travel-related carbon dioxide produced is 30,000 tonnes per year. This is around 25% of that related to our energy use, making travel a key target for impact reduction.
Waste
A wide range of waste material is generated from our activities. These include general office paper, chemicals from laboratories, process materials from manufacture, and demolition and construction waste as a result of the extensive building projects that have taken place in recent years.
Effluents
The more significant liquid effluents arise from the R&D and production activities and are therefore centred on our Sandwich facility. The effluent streams arise from production, non-hazardous laboratory wastes, foul drainage and rainwater runoff.
Following treatment, effluent is discharged (under Authorisation of Environment Agency) to the River Stour. It is therefore essential that the quality of the discharge is high in order to protect ecosystems in the river.
Quality criteria (specified in our operational permit) are determined by reference to Environmental Assessment Levels and Environmental Quality Standards published by the Environment Agency. These are used to identify the upper limits of specified discharges that are determined to be environmentally acceptable. Typically, discharges must be only a small percentage of these limits. This approach ensures that releases are controlled with a large margin of safety.
Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)
Both the R&D and production processes use organic solvents to undertake chemical reactions. These materials are often collectively known as Volatile Organic Compounds or VOCs. We currently use around 4,000 tonnes of organic solvent each year.
Control of VOCs is important because they have the potential to be lost relatively easily to the atmosphere and have a variety of complex environmental impacts depending on the specific material. These include lowering air quality by the formation of smog, contribution to global warming and destruction of the ozone layer.
Water
Typically, we use 800,000 cubic meters of mains supply water a year. This includes water used in manufacturing processes, laboratories and toilets.
Water is a vital resource and one that is increasingly feeling the pressures of demand nationally, especially in times of drought. Mains water is of a high quality. However, we often need to treat the supply further to meet our processing needs, such as water softening. Ultimately, this places an even higher value on this raw material.