Sustainability

Supporting our communities, protecting the planet,
and delivering long-term value for a sustainable future.

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Our planet and societies are facing enormous challenges. Our responsibility is to collaborate with our supply chain and industry partners to overcome these to leave a lasting, positive legacy for future generations. All our actions should ensure we are protecting the planet, supporting our communities and delivering long-term value for all our stakeholders. These are the pillars that drive our sustainability vision.

To think exceptional is not an aspiration; it is a standard that we encourage our team to achieve. This mindset has led to us establishing an award-winning safety and workforce engagement culture. As an industry leader, we aim to progress further and continue to demonstrate how a business must operate to realise a sustainable future for all.

Understanding our carbon footprint

We have a duty to our environment, to minimise our impacts and play our part in ensuring that it is handed to the next generation unharmed and hopefully enhanced by our actions. As a company we conduct vital, potentially life-saving work, but we realise that our work has an environmental impact. We are actively seeking to minimise this through human and engineering solutions.

Part of the process of minimising this impact is recognising what it is. For several years, we have been monitoring different energy consumption patterns. One of our most recent innovations is a carbon footprint calculator. This enables us to understand the carbon footprint of each of the materials we produce at our manufacturing facilities.

We go much further than this though, and actively seek to mitigate our impact wherever possible and preserve resources, leading us down our decarbonisation journey.

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85%

Euro 6 plant
vehicles

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72%

Hybrid electric
company vehicles

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90%

Waste diverted
from landfill

To reduce environmental impacts, first, we needed to understand them. Since 2015, we have recorded and monitored our energy usage. We explore our operational energy use from buildings and fuel usage across our fleet and we record and measure this data.

Our main environmental impact is our fleet. With over 250 trucks, the sheer amount of diesel usage for our operations is unavoidable. However, this has not stopped us from trying. We engineer our trucks and plant so that we can make environmentally sound changes and follow the Green House Gas Emissions hierarchy.

WJ Trucks through the years

We have designed and built many innovative vehicles that can do the work of two traditional trucks. Our vehicles incorporate extra preheaters or interchangeable ones where one truck can potentially carry out high friction surfacing and road markings. Additionally, 90% of our plant vehicles meet Euro 6 standards, and over 80% of our company cars and vans are hybrid or electric.

Telematics has played an important role in efficient routing and in helping us to monitor driver behaviour. Our Training Academy has enabled us to train over 300 LGV drivers, which includes safe and fuel-efficient driving. We have also implemented a reward scheme for monitored driver behaviour. We have seen the results deliver substantial environmental benefits with a 7.75% reduction in emissions related to driving yearly, and 12% increase in Miles Per Gallon.

We are also focussing our concerns on waste and trying to understand the end-of-life of our products. An innovation that has come from this is our waste screening system for the temporary stud operation. It has managed to divert 90% of this waste stream away from landfills by separating the plastic studs from the original aggregate mixture.

Additionally, we have implemented in-office recycling initiatives, planned PPE recycling, as well as actively reusing certain materials.

WJ Feeder Truck

We are exploring new ways to reduce using non-renewables. Two of our main depots have solar panels, this is creating enough electricity to run these depots as well as feeding back into the grid. We have also limited the use of gas heating and each of our buildings now have automatic LED lights.

Another way we are reducing the need for excavating fossil fuels is via our products. We were able to create a Cradle to Gate Life Cycle Assessment Model that provides quick, efficient, and reliable at-scale carbon foot printing for all current and future hot applied thermoplastic products. This was then independently verified to PAS 2050:2011 and ISO14067 (2018) by Lucideon, meeting the specifications and standards requirements for quantifying and reporting.

Using the carbon footprint model, we were able to determine that switching from a hydrocarbon resin binder to a biogenic alternative; rosin ester, reduced the average embedded carbon in our materials by an average of 81%, which when calculated against the amount of material we produce

image of road through countryside

image of road through countryside

means a reduction of 22,000tCO2e, or more than double our total annual operational footprint. Moreover, this switch was constant neutral and did not affect the performance of our products.

Our product carbon footprint calculator has gone on to win awards and peaked international interest and collaboration in our value chain. By understanding the whole life cycle of our products, we can improve it.

Other ways that we have improved our thermoplastic products as well is by using recycled glass beads and recycled aggregates. We have also designed and developed our own road stud, Allux. This is manufactured using recycled aluminium and is infinitely recyclable.

Investing for the future is something we are very proud of here at WJ Group. We pioneer new, innovative technology and operating practices within the highways industry as part of our decarbonisation journey. It is through these we were able to gain the prestigious Planet Mark for the whole group.

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Going ahead, we have plans achieve net zero operationally by 2032 through setting a science-based target. This aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Creating efficient value is fundamental to operating sustainably. This is beneficial for the environment, but it also enables greater value to be delivered to our clients. Our products have reduced both embedded and operational carbon footprints. We have targets to work towards Net Zero

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and create a circular economy collaboratively with our value chain along with responsible governance that is aligned with the global SDGs.

To create value efficiently, we need to consistently innovate and improve our vehicles, equipment, processes, behaviours, and all other aspects of our business.

Value also must be created meaningfully, which is why our innovations do not only focus on efficiency but on a wide range of attributes. This can be seen in our production process where we have developed systems that reduce waste and maximise the resources used.

One example is the introduction of the WJ Robotic PreMarker, which can reduce the time needed to complete pre-marking activities by 96%. It also removes operatives from the potential hazardous carriageway for extended periods of time.

 

As a business, we understand our role in creating better societies. It is not just about the value of what we spend, but how we create the value. To truly understand our impacts, we have developed a social value calculation model that enables us to see the value our activities are creating within communities throughout the UK.

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