• Sustainable materials

    We've chosen to focus on seven of our key materials as the first step in making more sustainable purchasing decisions throughout our business

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  • Our Commitments

    • Achieving sustainable consumption and production
    • Protecting natural resources
    • Improving energy efficiency and reducing reliance on fossil fuels
    • Improving the economic value of the existing railway
    • Being recognised as a good corporate citizen.
    Read more about our commitments
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    At Blackfriars we’re building a new station spanning the River Thames, and using barges to transport materials to and from site. Here Justine Kaye Mowe and the Blackfriars team explain more.

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  • Our supply chain has to adapt to the challenges of sustainable sourcing. To be truly sustainable we need to balance the management of our social and environmental impacts with our drive for efficiency in how we operate.

    Our seven key materials

    We have chosen seven key materials that both directly impact on the sustainability of the railway and over which we can have a genuinely positive influence. These are ballast, track timber (which includes sleepers, bearers and longitudinal timbers), concrete sleepers, steel rail, transmission oil, fuel, and paper.

    Our annual spend on these materials is more than £160m and we have set ourselves the target of 25 per cent of our spend on them being demonstrably sustainable by 2014. What we learn from focusing on these seven key materials will inform how we integrate sustainability further across our supply chain.

    We've decided to target paper, not because it is a major area of expenditure, but because it is used in every corner of our organisation. We believe that by reducing our reliance on paper, and increasing our use of recycled paper, we are sending the right message about wider sustainability issues.

    Action plans for sustainability

    To deliver our sustainable materials target we have developed working groups drawing on the expertise of the people directly involved in specifying, procuring, using and disposing of these materials. We are taking a whole lifecycle approach, and considering not just the carbon impact but also the waste, biodiversity, pollution and natural resources impacts as well. During 2009/10, the majority of our working groups developed five-year action plans for their key material.

    We have also developed plans with our partners, the Construction Industry Research and Information Association (CIRIA) and Action Sustainability on sustainable procurement across our supply chain.

    To provide leadership in this area we have set up a sustainable procurement steering group, chaired by our Director, Contracts and Procurement, to focus on driving our sustainable procurement programme forward.

  • Looking to the future

    In 20010/11 our key priorities are to:

    • Make good progress towards our target of 25 per cent of our total spend on our seven key materials being demonstrably sustainable by 2014
    • Work with our implementation partner Action Sustainability to widen our sustainable procurement focus out across our supply chain
    • Reduce our carbon emissions from the road distribution of our key materials like ballast, steel rail and sleepers, thanks to our new road haulage planning centre. Initiatives will include improved route planning and better use of IT to consolidate freight deliveries into more cost effective and efficient deliveries.
  •  This page has been externally assured by Bureau Veritas.