The environment

Yorwaste considers it essential to maintain the highest standards of environmental performance. The company is committed to minimising its own contribution to climate change whilst managing waste and recyclable materials in order to make best use of these resources. We are acutely aware of our responsibilities in this area and are constantly looking at ways of reducing our carbon footprint, as well as helping our customers to reduce their own.

The company maintains an integrated Environmental and Quality Management System, which has been awarded certification to both ISO14001 and ISO9001, the prestigious international standards covering Environmental and Quality Management Systems for approximately 50% of its business, including waste management, transport, transfer and recycling operations. It is planned to extend the scope of this certification in a phased manner to ultimately include all of the company’s operations.

Achieving these independently verified standards gives a clear demonstration of the company’s commitment to continual improvement and provision of quality services to its customers whilst ensuring standards of environmental control are maintained.

Yorwaste has also signed up to the Certificate of Commitment: Halving Waste to Landfill agreement, which states we are committed to playing our part in halving construction, demolition and excavation waste going to landfill by 2012.

We are committed to openly reporting our environmental performance and do this via a series of indicators developed by environmental charity the Green Alliance. This allows us to benchmark our performance with the whole of the waste management industry. This performances is published in an annual Environmental Report, which details the progress made in each key area.

Environmental report