About our businesses - Viridor
CUSTOMERS, COMMUNITY AND EMPLOYEES
The company employs a comprehensive range of technical and professional managerial and operational and support personnel. Many are vocationally trained and have extensive operational experience. Membership of relevant trade unions and professional bodies is widespread and is encouraged.
Viridor's equal opportunities policies and procedures seek to ensure that bias and discrimination in the treatment of job applicants and employees are eliminated. Training and appropriate support is provided to implement this throughout the company. Every effort is made to accommodate any form of disability by the use of reasonable adjustments in the workplace.
Viridor is pursuing a number of occupational health and safety initiatives, particularly focusing on reducing slip, trip and fall type accidents, continuing improvements in transport management, reducing vehicle/personnel interfaces and improving manual handling performance. Accreditation to the OHSAS 18001 international health and safety standard has been achieved across all sites with the exception of two electrical recycling sites which are planned to be certified by the end of this year. This accreditation is part of the company's integrated business management system (BMS), which provides the vehicle for delivering health and safety standards and procedures.
Viridor's reportable accident and incident rate per 100,000 employees is an important KPI and is set out below for the period 2005 to 2009. The company is very disappointed that the rate rose from 1,505 in 2008 to 2,445 per 100,000 employees in 2009.
This increase in reportable accidents (to 67 in total) was due primarily to manual handling type injuries and slips, trips and falls which are the company's largest cause of accidents. Despite comparing favourably with industry averages in previous years, Viridor's focus on health and safety improvement and performance has been further strengthened. The company has recruited additional health and safety professionals and continues to raise the level of training and support available to its staff. Particular efforts are being made to reinforce strong positive attitudes to health and safety at all levels in the company and health and safety is a key aspect of management incentive schemes.
ENVIRONMENT
Viridor's operations create significant positive environmental impacts including: safe and efficient treatment and disposal of society's waste materials; increased resource and energy efficiency from its recycling and energy recovery operations; the capture of methane (a greenhouse gas 21 times as potent as carbon dioxide (CO2)); the generation of renewable energy; and the restoration of despoiled landscapes such as disused mineral workings through the controlled deposit of waste materials. Significant negative impacts include: transportation and associated emissions; methane production (where not harnessed for energy generation or flared); leachate production; energy use in materials processing; and potential local impacts such as dust, noise, litter and odour.
Having led the industry in the development and implementation of an Environmental Management System, Viridor's integrated Business Management System (BMS) now incorporates externally accredited environmental, quality and health and safety systems. This allows clear targets to be set and met to maximise benefits and positive impacts and reduce and prevent adverse impacts, resulting in continuous improvement in these key areas.
Accreditation to the BMS across all sites and operations has been retained during 2009/10, accredited shortly. The company continues to report against the environmental performance indicators for the waste industry which it helped to develop and which are endorsed by the Green Alliance.
The amount of waste recycled and traded by the company grew by 3.5% to a little over 1.4 million tonnes.
SOCIAL AND COMMUNITY ISSUES
A 'good neighbour' policy is implemented at all facilities managed by Viridor. This includes local liaison groups meeting regularly at major sites, enabling local community stakeholders to be consulted and to be informed about the company's plans and operating procedures. Liaison group members include locally elected representatives of the community as well as representatives of the regulator, the relevant planning and waste authority and other local stakeholders.
Viridor supports two 'adopted' charities, Scope and the Primary Immunodeficiency Association (PIA). The company match-funds amounts raised by employees for these charities and also provides a 'payroll giving' facility enabling employees to directly donate to their chosen charity. Viridor also fully participates in the Landfill Communities Fund, a scheme whereby a proportion of Landfill Tax can be claimed as credits and distributed to qualifying community and environmental projects. During the year Viridor provided £9.4 million to Viridor Credits Environmental Company, an independent distributive environmental body. Funding is allocated at grassroots level by steering groups established to serve areas close to operational landfill sites.