All our operations run under various environmental permits and permissions and have environmental management systems in place aimed at compliance with these. Failure to comply with these can result in enforcement action, prosecution and restrictions on operations. Companies which repeatedly breach their permissions may face difficulty gaining new permits, or varying those already held, to take advantage of new technologies and opportunities. However, beyond compliance and minimising any potential environmental impact of its operations, we also have a positive role to play in the environment, in particular through its recycling and recovery operations.

Environmental performance is reported under the heading of carbon and climate change. For example, fuel use and efficiency is an environmental indicator and may have been reported on in CR type publications in the past as a separate item in terms of volume of fuel used or other relevant measure. Reporting in terms of carbon equivalents provides a common format for reporting such performance and we have adopted this approach where appropriate in its CR performance data.

To enable a better understanding of the sources and relative importance of carbon emissions from Shanks’ activities, our CR Report splits process carbon emissions data, into specific process types. In addition, improvements in how Shanks calculates its carbon data have been made over the past year and these have been incorporated into the data now reported.

In addition to reporting on its emissions, we also highlight the potential carbon avoidance in our facilities by activity. We do not seek to claim all of this avoidance and does not remove it from the Group’s emissions as a simple add-and-subtract exercise. Shanks do have a critical role in facilitating such carbon avoidance and it is valid for the Group to report on this.