National Flooring Invests in the Environment

As environmental awareness continues to improve, it is becoming increasingly important for companies to consider the environmental impact of their day to day activities. Monitoring, assessing and improving working practices not only help to limit the impact on the environment but can also help businesses to save money. As part of an ongoing commitment to maximise sustainability, National Flooring have decided to become members of Investors in the Environment.

Investors in the Environment are a local, not for profit environmental accreditation scheme and are designed to help businesses save money and reduce their environmental impact. The scheme offers three levels of accreditation, Bronze, Silver and Green. The basic bronze accreditation is achieved once a business is monitoring their resources, identified targets for improved efficiencies alongside minimum standards like having a recycling system in place, and educating staff on environmental awareness. The Silver accreditation, which National Flooring is working towards, involves the same as Bronze level but with the addition of monitoring additional resources, targets for reduction identified, more environmental actions, as well as a travel plan.

Unlike ISO14001, the international standard, which can be difficult for businesses to achieve and has an all or nothing approach, Investors in the Environment prides itself on being applicable to all businesses and them being able to achieve all levels. Even a small business with 5 employees can achieve the top Green Accreditation level.

Investors in the Environment also gives businesses the opportunity to give back to the local community and help with corporate social responsibility by organising local environmental activities, in which companies can participate.

Anna Simpson, Marketing Manager at National Flooring comments, “Working for big companies and main contractors, we are quite often asked whether we have an EMS in place. We therefore wanted to demonstrate to our clients that we are committed to reducing our environmental impact and enhancing our sustainability. Having researched various schemes we decided to show our support to a local environment scheme. We hope that by implementing a dedicated EMS system and with the support of Investors in the Environment, we will have the framework to implement, monitor and control our environmental performance.”