QHS is ISO 14001:2018 Environmental Management System accredited, which highlights our ongoing commitment to environmentally responsible methods of working and overall sustainability, and consequently we work closely with our clients ensure our objectives and actions assist them achieve their own environmental targets.
Ever since September 2021 we operate a "Green Team" where QHS Directors and employees meet on a quarterly basis to discuss environmental issues and ways we can improve. All employees have access to QHS’s Environmental documents, including minutes from all Green Team meetings so they can see our planned initiatives. This ensures that staff are fully engaged in environmental issues and understand their role in the process of reducing our company carbon footprint and working towards being a zero carbon company.
We set our own internal environmental KPI targets/action plans across our business to reduce carbon emissions and water waste and to improve recycling and overall sustainability. We monitor and measure these KPI’s and discuss them in our quarterly Green Team meetings. Where we meet the targets we have set ourselves, we then aim to set stricter benchmarks to achieve during the following quarter/year. Where we do not meet targets, we investigate and implement additional measures to ensure compliance.
For example one of these KPI’s was to change over 12 Senior Managers petrol/diesel cars at one fell swoop to 12 all electric VW ID.3 cars with zero emissions. This KPI was 100% achieved in 2021. Another KPI set was to change further diesel cars to Hybrid cars which only have emissions of 30g/km (until such time as the UK's EV Charging Infrastructure is in place to switch the entire QHS fleet to all-electric vehicles).
In terms of measureable recycling KPI targets that were set, achieved and are ongoing, these include carrying out monthly office inspections by a Senior Manager to ensure maximum recycling of paper, cardboard, plastic bottles and tin cans etc. QHS also set another ongoing measurable KPI to identify redundant, and wherever possible return this equipment to manufacturers (so they can either refurbish them or recycle the parts), such as 34 Gas Flue Analysers that were returned in June 2022. In January 2023 QHS switched to a paperless payroll operation, sending out payslips ever since then by email to all it's employees, plus changed all it's Head Office light bulbs to LED and vacated its storage unit, scanning documents rather than generating more and more paperwork.
