A round up of environment management news from companies including AcerlorMittal, Facebook and Virgin Atlantic.
The decorative paints division of AkzoNobel UK has achieved the Carbon Trust triple standard, becoming one of the first companies to be recertified for reducing its greenhouse-gas emissions, waste and water use. The company has installed a heating and cooling system at its Slough head office, which is designed to save £335,000 on the annual energy bill, while the introduction of a rainwater harvesting system at its manufacturing plant in Prudhoe saves around 900,000 litres of water a year.
The collaboration between Adidas and the NGO, Parley for the Oceans, has resulted in a prototype for a new sports shoe, whose upper section is made entirely of yarns and filaments reclaimed and recycled from ocean waste and illegal deep-sea gillnets. The sportswear company says it will launch consumer-ready ocean plastic products later this year.
ArcelorMittal has announced a partnership with carbon recycling company LanzaTech and the steel industry services business, Primetals Technologies, to construct Europe’s first commercial-scale production facility to create bioethanol from waste gases produced during steelmaking. The £87 million plant will be built next to ArcelorMittal’s Ghent plant in Belgium. The company says 1 tonne of bioethanol will displace 5.2 barrels of conventional fuel and reduce its carbon emissions by 2.3 tonnes.
Facebook is to build a datacentre at Fort Worth in Texas that will be powered entirely by the 20MW of new wind energy the company will install and connect to the state’s grid. The firm claims the carbon impact of one person’s annual use of Facebook is equivalent to the carbon impact of a medium-size latte. It says this relatively small footprint has been achieved by investing in operational efficiencies and renewables.
Virgin Atlantic reduced its absolute carbon footprint by 12% between 2007 and 2014. The airline is aiming to achieve a 30% saving in carbon for every tonne of passengers and cargo flown between 2007 and 2020. It says savings so far are mostly due to its $7 billion investment in more carbon-efficient planes from Airbus and Boeing.
