Environment
e2v has been certified to Environmental Management System (EMS) BS EN ISO14001 since April 1997, one of the UK's first companies to do so.
Being ISO14001 certified does not necessarily make a company environmentally friendly. It does, however, indicate that e2v is environmentally aware, recognise its impacts on the environment and endeavour to identify, improve and maintain processes and tasks to minimise potential pollution risks.
In addition to the numerous projects and tasks which must be undertaken to maintain compliance to ISO14001, we have a number of additional programmes ongoing. Year-on-year improvements are made in both monetary terms and the impact on the environment. Projects include recycling all waste paper and cardboard, recycling all printer cartridges and the reduction of chemical processing requirements. e2v also endeavours to support the community with such activities as sponsoring the Essex Wildlife Trust and encouraging employees to join in local environmental initiatives.
The purpose of the Environmental Management Team is to monitor environmental issues associated with e2v’s day-to-day activities. Continual improvement of the system is achieved by development and implementation of improvement objectives and audits.
Certification to the standard is monitored by DNV Certification Limited.
Throughout the year many people from across the business take responsibility for environmental objectives and work towards continually improving systems, processes or awareness with regard to the environment. For example:
- A team targeting environmental initiatives arranged the purchase of a new totally enclosed Perchloroethylene Degreasing plant. This will save the emission of about 20 Tonnes of solvent into the atmosphere per year.
In addition to working to reduce the environmental impact of its manufacturing activities, e2v is working on many product development programmes which reduce energy usage. For example:
- The ESCIOT is a highly efficient Inductive Output Tube, used in television broadcast, and uses less than 50% of the energy consumed by the Klystron it replaced. A simple calculation by the engineers involved suggests there have been savings of over 20million KW/hours based on the ESCIOTs supplied by e2v.
- Currently about 3% of the worlds electricity is used in crushing rock for mineral or precious metal extraction. e2v is currently working on a project to use microwaves to reduce this by half. Follow this link for the full story.
e2v is very proud of its achievements to date and will continue to strive towards further reducing the impact on the environment of both its direct activities and its products.
e2v’s Environmental Policy can be found here
e2v's certificate of resource efficiency can be found here
A Copy of the ISO14001 Certificate can be found here
The Supplement to the certificate containing the detailed scope can be found here