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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 Vision

Our environmental vision is to operate with the minimum practicable environmental impact and be the leading innovator of environmental benefits in our industry.
We continually seek to reduce the environmental impacts and the associated costs of our operations worldwide.

Our primary impacts on the environment are:

• Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from energy use in our facilities.
• GHG emissions from business travel

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

• The waste produced by our operations
• Paper consumed in the production of our main marketing material for the Farnell, Newark, MCM, CPC and element14 businesses.
• Using the way that we do business to support and encourage innovations that benefit the environment.

Our secondary impacts on the environment are:

• Packaging dispatched to our customers.
• Water consumed at our facilities.
• Waste electronic components and equipment.
• GHG emissions from the delivery of our products to customers.

We set our annual targets for the reduction of these impacts and publically report our performance online, in our Annual Sustainability Report and the Annual Financial Report and 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

Please click here to view the Europe and Asia-Pacific 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.

Please click here to view the Register of Environmental Aspects and Impacts

Please click here to view Environmental Aspects and Impacts – Review, Measurement and Reporting

 

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.

Please click here to view the Premier Farnell policy on the disposal of electronic waste

 

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.

We report our global energy consumption based on the January-December calendar year. With facilities located around the world, we receive invoice data from utility companies at differing times and in order to ensure we provide comparable data globally we set the cut-off point at December. As we increase the coverage of energy metering across our businesses, we expect to see our capability to report in real-time improve and we will then be able to align our energy consumption reporting with the financial (February to January) year.

	Total amount used				Unit Rate
	('000)				(Total used/£1000 of sales)
	2010	2009	2008	2007	2010	2009	2008	2007
Type of energy consumed
Electricity (KwH)	31,123	30,732	32,201	31,596	32	39	40	44
Natural Gas (cubic metres)	1,283	1,357	1,472	1,313	1.3	1.7	1.8	1.8
Propane (kilogrammes)	7	6	5	5	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.01
Fuel Oil (litres)	7	102	75	97	0.0	0.1	0.1	0.1
Petrol for company cars/trucks (litres)	228	299	312	310	0.2	0.4	0.4	0.4
Diesel Fuel (litres)	192	338	398	341	0.2	0.4	0.5	0.5
Employee Business Travel
Petrol for rented cars/trucks (litres)	361	434	506	644	0.4	0.5	0.6	0.9
	Metric tonnes CO2 emitted				Metric tonnes CO2/£1000 of sales
	23,165	24,069	25,534	25,139	0.024	0.030	0.032	0.035

 

GHG emissions from business travel

As a global business, our employees are required to work with internal and external contacts. We take advantage of videoconferencing and other virtual meeting tools where possible; however we recognise that there are times when it is necessary to travel in order to meet the needs of the business. Business travel is reported on the January 2010 to December 2010 calendar year to align with our GHG emissions reporting. As a result of changing our UK travel provider, we do not have data for UK-originating travel for October 2010. We therefore expect that the figures reported here are lower than our actual distance travelled and resultant CO2 emissions for 2010.

	Short Haul Air	Long Haul Air	Rail	Total
Distance (km)	10,814,599	12,973,002	372,813	24,160,414
CO2 emissions (tonnes)	1,874	1,483	21	3,378

 

Waste produced by our operations

Our business activities involve the unpacking of large quantities of products from our suppliers in our distribution centres, as well as the use of a large quantity of office stationery in our sales, marketing and administration centres. We work to reduce the amount of waste that our facilities generate, and simultaneously to ensure that an increasing percentage of waste is recycled.

(tonnes)	2010	2009	2008
Waste sent to landfill	1,288	24,069	25,534
Of which was Hazardous	259	782
Waste recycled	3,477	23,287	25,534
Of which was Hazardous	3	3	3
Total waste generate	4,765	4,413	4,710
% waste recycled	73.0%	67.5%	67.7%
(tonnes)	2010	2009	2008
Waste disposed per £1,000 sales	0.0013	0.0018	0.0019
Waste recycled per £1,000 sales	0.0035	0.0038	0.0039

 

Paper consumed in production of catalogues

Paper catalogues remain an important marketing channel between us and our customers. We ship approximately two million catalogues per year worldwide, and recognise that this is a significant environmental impact. We offer additional options to customers who prefer a catalogue experience, including application-specific microsites and portals, as well as digital versions of our printed catalogue available both online and on CD and, in FY2012, we will offer an iPad-optimised digital catalogue to customers also. We work to reduce the weight of paper used in each catalogue, and to use sustainability certified paper stocks where this is possible.

2010
Paper Type	Sustainability Certified	Percentage of total paper consumption	Actual weight of paper consumed (tonnes)
Post-Consumer Waste recycled	YES	12%	250.0
Post-Consumer Waste recycled	NO	14%	313.6
Virgin	YES	56%	1216.0
Virgin	NO	18%	390.2
Total weight of paper consumed in 2010 catalogues (tonnes)			1824.1
Total number of catalogues produced in 2010			2022710
Average weight per cataolgue			1.07 kg

2009
Paper Type	Sustainability Certified	Percentage of total paper consumption	Actual weight of paper consumed (tonnes)
Post-Consumer Waste recycled	YES	12%	225.4
Post-Consumer Waste recycled	NO	17%	311.8
Virgin	YES	52%	949.0
Virgin	NO	19%	338.0
Total weight of paper consumed in 2009 catalogues (tonnes)			1824.1
Total number of catalogues produced in 2009			846049
Average weight per cataolgue			2.2 kg

2008
Paper Type	Sustainability Certified	Percentage of total paper consumption	Actual weight of paper consumed (tonnes)
Post-Consumer Waste recycled	YES	15%	421.0
Post-Consumer Waste recycled	NO	18%	517.5
Virgin	YES	45%	1322.2
Virgin	NO	22%	650.5
Total weight of paper consumed in 2009 catalogues (tonnes)			2911.2
Total number of catalogues produced in 2009			1274460
Average weight per cataolgue			2.3 kg

 

Progress against 2010 Environmental Targets

 

Target 2010	Progress
Recertify all Green Facilities that received the award during or before 2007 to standrad Green Facility status or above by the end of quarter two 2010.	All facilities during or before 2008 have been recertified.
Recertify all Green Facilities that received the award during 2008 to standard Green Facility status or above by the end of 2010.	All facilities during or before 2008 have been recertified.
Assess two larger facilities to the Green Facility Platinum Standard by the end of 2010.	Our Gaffney, CPC and Maybrook facilities qualify for the Green Facility Platinum and will be recertified in FY2012.
Implement projects at our owned facilities that will contirbute towards a 10% reduction against the emissions from the baseline year of 2009 by the end of 2012.	MCM, Springboro and Newark, Gaffney, both meet the requirements to be recognised as Energy SMART facilities and will be recertified in FY2012.
This is equivalent to a toal reduction of 2,478 tonnes of carbon by the end of 2012.
Establish a company energy efficiency recognition programme and award "Energy Smart" status to any facility demonstrating significant energy savings and management procedures.
Ensure that all the company-wide e-waste management policy established in 2009 is being folowed by requiring the following of our facilities:	One of our European facilities donated electronic equipment to a charity with which we have no tracking process to ensure that waste was properly handled. All other facilities disposed of their waste in compliance with our internal management policy.
All EU facilities will complete and submit documentation detailing their annual electronic waste disposals by units or weight and supporting evidence that this disposal was carried out in compliance with the WEEE directive.
All USA/Canada facilities will complete and submit annual documentation detailing their annual electronic waste disposals by units or weight in line with the procedure set out for their regain in the group e-waste disposal policy.	All of our USA/Canada facilities have met the requirements of the e-Stewards organisation, including the use of BAN-apporved recyclers where e-Stewards were not available.
Complete a review and any necessary upgrades to office equipment at our Ravenswood, Gaffney and Rockside facilities in the US.	We have completed a review of the scope for a managed printing system at our main US facilities. We plan to begin phasing in new printers with managed printing capabilities in 2011, as well as implementing fax and scanning capabilities on multimfunctional printers.
Asia-Pacific region businesses will complete and submit documentation detailing their annual electronic waste disposals by units or weight in line with the procedure set out for the region in the group e-waste disposal policy.	Asia-Pacific has contracted a new electronic waste disposal complany in Singapore to ensure the waste is porperly handled on disposal.
Fully investigate opportunities to reduce the weight of paper used in our catalogues as they are identified by our printers.	Our businesses use the lightest-possible paper that can be automatically sorted by local postal services.
Broaden the scope of our measurement in include regularly-produced, paper-based marketing communications, such as our Tech First journals in the UK, and include the impact from these sources in future reporting.	We have publically reported our 'minilog' publications for Europe, America and Asia-Pacific.
Continue to specify recycled and/or sustainability-certified paper, e.g. FSC certified when available and competitively priced.	57% of paper used in catalogue production, and 56% in minilog production was sustainability - certified.
Improve the group-wide recycling rate and achieve a percentage of waste recycled in 2010 that is higher than 67.5%	We have reported recycling performance on page 30. Leeds schieved an increase of 12%.
Improve the Leeds facilities' recycling rate by 5% during 2010

 

Please click here to view a copy of the EMS 74045 certificate for Premier Farnell