Responsibly designing & manufacturing our products
91% of all plastic is not recycled, ending up in landfill or our oceans. We are determined not to contribute to this and to make recyclability a cornerstone of our product development.
Striving for 100% recyclability
By ensuring all our products are both robust and recyclable, we can reduce the amount of waste material that ends up in landfill and reduce the environmental impact of production.
Recycling plastic components
Currently, Dropsafe only uses virgin materials to guarantee that our products provide the highest level of safety, but we are exploring using recycled panels for our polymer Dropsafe Barrier system. These panels, using a percentage of recycled material, would be an ideal solution for indoor application, where high levels of environmental resistance are not needed. Dropsafe has also implemented a retrieval scheme, where customers can send back Barrier panels after use and they will be recycled.
We understand the need to take action to make sustainability and environmental protection a core business priority
Putting the environment first
Dropsafe is first and foremost a safety company dedicated to protecting your people. Yet, we are no less committed to sustainability.
A responsible supply chain player
As energy and industrial companies evolve their operations in line with the global transition to renewable energies and more sustainable business practices, we too need to advance and evolve as part of the supply chain. The environment is important to all of us, and only by acknowledging this can we continue to grow; all businesses play a critical role in the sustainability space, and all have a responsibility to make sustainability a core priority.
Reducing our impact
Dropsafe products are engineered with the environment in mind. All products are assessed in terms of their long-term impact on the environment and are designed to have long service lives. This means that they not only keep your people safer for longer, but also have a lower cumulative environmental impact than products that must be regularly replaced.
We have also reviewed and consequently reduced the amount of packaging we use. For our Net product, we have reduced packaging by more than 50% in the last 18 months and moved away from non-recyclable hard plastics. In the next five years we plan to move to recycled – not merely recyclable – packaging for the Nets.
The Barrier system’s packaging is 100% cardboard, and, thanks to our expanded global distributor network, we have managed to reduce transit times and cut down on our overall use of packaging.
We work to ensure that we are making the best possible products, while thinking consciously and realistically about how we can conserve raw materials in our design and manufacturing
Conserving raw materials
Dropsafe products are made using the highest quality materials available to ensure that we can provide the highest standards of safety to our customers. However, the benefit of having our own factory means that we can explore innovative manufacturing techniques that significantly reduce raw material use.
An asset, not a consumable
When you buy a Dropsafe safety solution you are investing in an asset, not a consumable. The increased service life of our products means that they can be in use for longer, reducing the need for regular replacement and, by consequence, the quantity of raw materials used.
At Dropsafe, we promote long-term ownership of safety assets to reduce consumable waste
Targeting wastage
Consumable products that cannot be recycled and are single use often require regular replacement, creating staggering amounts of industrial waste. We have consequently made a deliberate decision to design products for long-term ownership.
The benefits of solutions that last
To use an example, we can compare the amount of material used for the Dropsafe Barrier system as compared to the two most common alternative barrier solutions – PVC mesh netting and marine-grade plywood.
To protect 1500m of guardrailing over a ten-year period:
- 127.5 tons of marine plywood would be required (taking into account the need for annual replacement). None of this material would be recyclable at the end of its service life. 97% more material would be required compared to PVC mesh netting.
- 5.1 tons of mesh netting would be required (again taking into account the need for annual replacement). None of this material would be recyclable at the end of its service life. 33% more material would be required compared to the Dropsafe Barrier.
- 3.4 tons of Dropsafe Barrier would be required (with no annual replacement needed over the 10 years). 100% of the material would be recyclable at the end of its service life.