Eurostar has committed to a 10-point plan across the business to reduce our overall impact on the environment.
Our 10-point plan is based on three principles for the use of materials and supplies:
- Reduce usage wherever possible
- Source supplies responsibly
- Recycle what is used or produced.
- We’ve estimated it will take three to five years to achieve all 10 across the business.
- Separating, sorting and recycling all on-board waste, including food waste, by the most appropriate methods.
- Replacing train air-conditioning refrigerants with the less environmentally damaging chemical R134a by 2008 – seven years before the EU deadline.
- Helping travellers reduce CO2 emissions when accessing Eurostar services by providing journey planner information and ticket sales for public transport options, and developing new travel initiatives and partnerships.
- Sorting and recycling waste from stations, offices and the Temple Mills maintenance depot, with the goal of zero disposal to landfill; and with 80 per cent of waste to be recycled by 2009.
- Ensuring that lighting, heating and mechanical plant at stations, depots and offices are as energy efficient as possible; developing a ‘switch-off’ culture; and procuring electricity from greener sources of energy.
- Reusing water from train-washing at the new Temple Mills maintenance depot, and investing in rainwater collection to further reduce consumption.
- Reducing paper usage by switching to e-tickets and bar code ticketing downloaded to mobile phones; undertaking direct marketing via email and web-based information; and where paper is unavoidable, sourcing from sustainable forests or recycled paper, and recycling all used paper.
- Ensuring on-board disposable items (e.g. cups, plates, napkins) are either biodegradable (made from maize extract) or fully recyclable.
- Refurbishing or de-branding and recycling used staff uniforms.
- Sourcing on-train food from local sources in UK, France or Belgium wherever available, including organic suppliers, or Fairtrade for overseas supplies.
We’ve made a good start on many of these points, and will keep you posted with more detail as we progress. As an example, here are a couple of things we’re most proud of in the last 6 months:
-All the cups, bags and napkins in the bar-buffet are now biodegradable and, where possible, made from recycled material. The majority of our cold food is organic, locally-sourced and seasonal. And our hot drinks are now all ethically sourced too. We continue to work with our suppliers on the rest.
- We refurbish and reuse all the uniforms we can and incinerate any which are unusable to provide energy for other industry.
