Towards greener and cleaner procurement

SUEZ recycling and recovery UK has grown its contribution to the circular economy by diverting increasing volumes of materials from landfill and putting them to good use, through re-use, recycling and energy recovery. On behalf of our customers, significant carbon emissions are avoided through these and other activities.

We must also operate in partnership with our suppliers to identify sustainable goods and services that will enable SUEZ to reduce its own resource consumption, in turn reducing our carbon emissions.

SUEZ’s environmental policy includes a commitment to buy from suppliers with compatible standards, as part of our effort to drive continuous improvement by reducing our resource consumption and carbon footprint, and by generating social value for local communities.

Lyreco, one of our key suppliers, has been awarded the Ecovadis Platinum Award for its sustainability performance. In partnership with Lyreco, we are sourcing and specifying products that reduce the resources we consume, the associated carbon emissions and the environmental impact of the products we buy through our business activities.

Paper and cleaning products are two notable examples.

• In 2019, we started using a new eco-efficient paper called Discovery. This paper is produced from a gum tree, Eucalyptus Globulus, which produces more pulp than other species. Almost a third less wood (32%) is needed for a given amount of paper and paper waste is lower, by around 6%. And fewer resources are consumed in the production process. Compared with other types of paper, Discovery offers significant reductions in – energy (30%), water (45%), CO2 emissions and fossil fuel use (71%).
• We have introduced a new range of more sustainable cleaning products called BioHygiene at all our sites. Traditional chemical cleaning agents tend to be toxic to humans and harmful to the environment, especially water and marine life. BioHygiene uses microbes and natural substances to clean instantly, effectively and efficiently, penetrating surfaces so they remain cleaner for longer. These are concentrated products diluted for use on site, so we also use less plastic and the emissions and costs arising from transportation are reduced too.

Switching to Discovery paper and moving from 100gsm to 75gsm for all our standard printer paper requirements resulted in a reduction of two tonnes in annual paper consumption and a saving of 424kg of CO2 emissions. Purchasing in bulk from a single supplier has also reduced costs.

A trial of the BioHygiene range confirmed that the higher purchase price of concentrated cleaners was justified by their environmental and cleaning performance. Replacing all chemical products will reduce our cleaning-related CO2 emissions by 93% and overall costs by more than 20%.