Uniting to address plastic waste and pollution

Flint Group IT function strives to dispose all electronic waste produced at its sites in an environmentally correct way and according to legislation.

This is carried out by sending obsolete computers, printers and other office electronics to recycle where possible, using only ISO 14001 certified disposal companies.

Most of our partners have recycling programmes that we use for our toners, batteries, computers and certain hardware.

Flint Group is also encouraging users of IT equipment to ensure a sustainable power plan on their equipment, so that machines not used, go into power-save mode.

Maintaining the battery life of any hardware is also taken into consideration, therefore the policy is applied to all the laptops regulating the power plan in battery mode to shut down the monitors when not used and processor speed reduction.

Our focus on reduction of waste has also meant that we have replaced physical servers with software based solutions, helping greatly to reduce power use, conserve space and resources, while at the same time offering greater system flexibility and better performance.

The IT department operates policies that regulate how equipment should be handled by users, what is allowed and prohibited in order to stay aligned with Flint Group environmental regulations.

Choosing partners who take their commitments to the environment very seriously is also a key factor for Flint Group.

In addition, most of our tech-partners use recycled material in their plastic caging and packaging material. For example, Dell is using up 25% recycled ocean plastic in their new computers and monitors.

“According to some estimates, there are more than 5 trillion pieces of plastics in the oceans right now – equivalent to 5 grocery bags full of plastic stacked upon every foot of every nation’s coastline around the world. The vast majority of the debris is less than 5 mm in size.

That’s because the plastics break down into ever smaller pieces (despite what you may have heard, it never breaks down completely).”