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Environment

We have always had a strong commitment to the environment, which is why we recently transitioned to the latest version of 14001:2015 quality standard. We have accomplishing major milestones, such as Zero waste to landfill and being awarded The Queen's Award for Enterprise: Sustainable Development in both 2011 and again in 2018. Whilst we continue to meet these requirements and strive for best practice in our sustainable practices, we now focus our efforts on raising awareness and helping our customers to become more sustainable, often with the aid of our sister companies, Brother Industries UK and Brother Slovakia.

Global commitments, local action

View our Global Vision

Reducing our impact, right across the supply chain

Our true environmental impact as a business in the UK is determined not only by the performance of our own operation, but by the overall effect of our whole supply chain, taking into account the products we make and sell as a business, and how our customers use them.

As a global group, we are continually reducing our environmental impact under the Brother Group Environmental Policy, which spans the whole life cycle of our products and aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs). This runs from the raw materials that make our products and the way they are designed, through logistics and supporting our customers’ and suppliers’ green goals, right the way to our recycling and re-use commitments.

Toner cartridge recycling

Our cutting-edge recycling facility Brother Industries UK in Ruabon, North Wales takes thousands of used toner and ink cartridges and re-uses or recycles their constituent materials and components. We have been refining our processes since 2004, so now up to 87% of returned cartridges, by weight, are reused or recycled.

Each time we refurbish a print cartridge in Wales, or our sister recycling site in Slovakia, it produces less than half as much CO2 than it takes to make a new one. This sustainable end-of-life solutions service for our consumables enables us to strive for the environmental protection embodied by the Brother Earth philosophy. This service is also available free to all our customers.

Join us in protecting the environment

Recycle your inks and toners

Zero waste to landfill

We are proud that towards the end of 2019 we achieved our target of being 100% zero waste to landfill across our UK operation. This achievement has allowed us to pass on the guarantee to our customers that the Brother toners they send us for recycling will result in absolutely zero waste.

At the same time, we have stepped up our CO2 reporting to customers that recycle with us, so that the information can be fed into their own sustainability data – something that is becoming increasingly important as sustainability plays more of a role in buying decisions across the board. In fact, research shows that four in every five (83%) consumers believe it’s important or extremely important for companies to design products that are meant to be reused or recycled. Taken as a whole, these initiatives are driving continuous improvement in environmental performance not only across our own business, but those of our customers and suppliers too.

^{*Source: Accenture, April 2019}

Helping customers deliver sustainability

Just like us, we recognise that many of our customers have their own sustainability goals. Alongside our product offerings, our managed print services (MPS) are an important way we’re helping our customers to reduce the environmental impact of their print fleet.

Our MPS offering helps our customers to understand and monitor their printer usage so that it can be made as efficient as possible. This includes reducing the unnecessary consumption of paper, toner, ink and energy. We frequently carry out fleet audits for customers to ensure their hardware is fit-for-purpose and correctly deployed, and we also produce regular reports and on-demand data access to our larger MPS customers to give them maximum visibility on their printer usage. In this way, we are helping to cut wasted energy and materials from thousands of working environments across the UK every day.

We have achieved strong environmental accreditations

View our Company Policies

It's a wrap

We supported WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme), a recycling week, from 25th September to 1st October 2017. During this period, we held activities to encourage and promote recycling to our colleagues, giving them ideas of things they could do, not just in the office but also at home. The main event was a competition for the best use of recycled cardboard.

Conservation day

We have an ongoing partnership with Tameside Greenspace and help them to improve and maintain woodland and greenspace areas, pollution control, improve biodiversity, woodland/canopy cover, landscape diversity and visual impact.

Teams of colleague’s volunteer to maintain and provide more sustainable areas in Tameside, making a positive impact on our woodland, greenspace, wildlife and community. The Greenspace team rely on our volunteers as without them they would not be able to fulfil the pledge and strategies within it.

Biodiversity

Brother UK carried out a biodiversity conservation audit of its site in Audenshaw and identified those habitats and species that would benefit from particular management or actions. Using this information, a Biodiversity Action Plan was developed which identified how we could improve biodiversity within the landscaped and wooded areas. The plan continues to help safeguard the biodiversity of the landscape and its inhabitants. It also helps to raise awareness and to ensure its long-term success.