CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

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Click here for the ISO 14001 certification for our facility in Gaffney, North Carolina

Click here for the ISO 14001 certification for our Premier Farnell UK Ltd and European facilities

Our aim

We continually seek to reduce the environmental impacts and the associated costs of our operations worldwide.

Our principal environmental impacts are

• GHG emissions
• The use of paper and packaging
• The disposal of waste

We set annual targets for the reduction of these impacts and publicly report our performance online and in the Annual Financial Report & Accounts.

We are proud to be member’s of the Prince’s May Day Network – demonstrating our commitment to the environment, and recognising our effect on climate change.

We collect data on the amount of energy used and greenhouse gas emitted, waste disposed and waste recycled by Group operations in order to assess our environmental impact.

Click here to view our full environmental policy

Data Collection

We derive our carbon footprint from our annual energy bills, using DEFRA, the US DoE and the World Resource Institute’s GHG protocol emissions factors for our countries of operation.  Where our operations are particularly small, or it is not practical to obtain energy bills, we estimate carbon emissions for facilities, based on a calculation of headcount.

We collect data on waste disposed to landfill and waste recycled from our waste disposal suppliers directly.

Quality of our data

In order to ensure that we have representative and reliable environmental data, we review new data each quarter and compare it to data from prior years. This continual review and comparison allows us to detect and correct any errors and may result in the restatement of certain prior year figures.

The figures published in our annual CSR report are assured by SGS UK Ltd for their accuracy.

Register of Environmental Aspects & Impacts

Environmental Aspects & Impacts – Review, Measurement & Reporting

Carbon reduction programme

The Group continually seeks to reduce the environmental impact of its operations. In 2007, we defined our carbon footprint as those primary activities over which we have direct control - Premier Farnell’s carbon footprint therefore includes all of our activities from the receipt of products into our warehouses to their despatch to customers, including the production of catalogues and marketing material, our use and the disposal of packaging and the energy required to operate our facilities.

	Total amount used				Unit rate				Unit rate
					Total used/£1,000 of sales				Total used/1,000 square feet
Type of energy consumed**	(’000)	(’000)	(’000)		2008	2007	2006		2008	2007	2006
	2008	2007	2006
Electricity (kwh)	32,201	31,596	33,982		39.7	43.9	39.9		14	14	15
Natural gas (cubic metres)	1,472	1,314	1,646		1.8	2.0	1.9		0.6	0.6	0.7
Propane (kilogrammes)	5	5	5		0.01	0.01	0.01
Fuel oil (litres)	75	97	90		0.1	0.1	0.1
Fuel for company cars/trucks (litres)*	312	311	664		0.4	0.4	0.8
Diesel (litres)	398	341	1,573		0.5	0.5	2.0
Employee business travel#
Fuel for rented cars/trucks (litres)*	511	647	855		0.6	0.9	1.04

CO2 emissions**	Total tonnes CO2 emitted				Metric tonnes CO2/£1,000 of sales
	2008	2007	2006		2008	2007	2006
Total	25,120	25,292	31,710		0.031	0.035	0.037

Waste disposed	Total amount (000kg)				Unit rate (kg per £1,000 of sales)
	2008	2007	2006		2008	2007	2006
Total	1,298	1,554	1,857		1.6	2.2	2.2

Waste recycled	Total amount (000kg)				Unit rate (kg per £1,000 of sales)
	2008	2007	2006		2008	2007	2006
Total	3,246	2,696	2,710		4.0	3.7	3.3
Percent
of waste
recycled	71%	63%	59%

* Assumed 10.5 kilometres/litre of petrol consumed in the USA, and 12.75 kilometres/litre of petrol consumed in Europe and Asia Pacific.

** Natural gas conversion factors obtained from DEFRA (www.defra.gov.uk/environment/business/envrp/conversion-factors.htm). Fuel oil and propane conversion factors obtained from US Department of Energy (www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/coefficients.html). Utilised World Resources Institute (WRI) recommended CO2 conversion factors (www.ghgprotocol.org/calculation-tools) for all other conversions.

# We do not include business travel data as we currently do not have complete records for all business travel during the year. Whilst we collect data on paper, print and packaging from our suppliers and internally, we have not yet developed a comprehensive collection of data for these and so do not report them in this table.

In those areas outside our direct control (for example the delivery of products to our customers by third party carriers), we seek to work with sustainable third parties and we engage with our suppliers on their approach to corporate responsibility and environmental stewardship.

Our current objective is to reduce our carbon emissions to the lowest practicable and economic level by the end of 2009. Our focus is an ongoing programme of energy saving initiatives at our facilities worldwide.

We have undertaken energy audits at our main facilities and achieved reductions in carbon emissions for the last six years.
This year we have continued our ongoing programme of reducing the environmental impacts of our catalogues and direct mail activity, as well as engaging with our largest third party logistics supplier to develop the quantification of our scope 3 carbon emissions.

All of our large facilities have now achieved Green Facility status. This is a mark of sound environmental consideration by employees. It is measured through a system of self-assessment and improvement of their onsite environmental stewardship, and an audit of their performance.

During 2009, we are instituting a reassessment programme to ensure that the standard of performance is maintained, as well as developing a new higher tier of the programme, to recognise our facilities that have accelerated their performance beyond expectation.

Environmental legislation

Two significant pieces of European environmental legislation affect the Group’s electronic component distribution businesses. These are the European Directives dealing with the Restriction of the use of certain Hazardous Substances (RoHS) in electronic and electrical equipment, and the disposal of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). The RoHS and WEEE legislation addresses the harmful effects of such waste in two ways: first by restricting the use of certain hazardous substances in electronic and electrical equipment and, second by imposing responsibilities to increase the recycling, re-use and recovery of such equipment.

Click here to view our policy on the disposal of Company electronic waste

Paper-based marketing materials

The Group takes a proactive approach to reducing the environmental impact of its paper based marketing materials. The Farnell and CPC 2008 catalogues were both printed on the lightest-possible FSC certified paper feasible for the printing process.

As all the materials used in the Farnell catalogue production process are recyclable, we are encouraging customers to recycle their old editions upon receipt of the new publication.

The Newark 2008 catalogues were printed on recycled content and/or FSC or SFI certified paper. As of April 2008, all of MCM’s direct mail flyers were printed on FSC certified or recycled content paper.

As part of our drive towards the web, we are reducing the quantity of catalogues and direct mail that we print, in order to encourage our customers to move to our less-impactful transitional websites.

Between September 2008 and October 2009, producing our main product catalogues has used 1,746 tonnes of paper - a reduction of 37.3% against our 2007/8 consumption. Over 99% of the paper used in our Europe and Asia-Pacific region catalogues came from FSC-certified sources, and in America our MCM catalogues were printed on 97% recycled stock.

Our Performance

We set annual targets around our environmental initiatives, which we are committed to publish, enabling our stakeholders to monitor our progress year-on-year.

Click here to view our performance against 2008 targets, and our targets for 2009