At FirstCar we are acutely aware of the environmental, social and economic challenges facing our planet and we are committed to being part of the solutions to help create a sustainable and just future. We publish over 2.5 million magazines every year in the UK and use digital publishing, video and events to connect with drivers and to share best practice among road safety professionals. We looked at our business operations to evaluate where we can have the biggest impacts and where we have the most control over those impacts.
We have decided to focus our efforts around the following areas:
- Paper usage, printing and our supply chain
- Plastic pollution
- Communicating and informing
- Collaborating for greater impact
- Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions
- Giving back
Our biggest environmental impact is the production of our magazines which is the core operation of our business. We are determined to minimise these impacts and in June 2019 we made the decision to use recycled paper for our magazines – decreasing our demand for virgin paper and helping to support the paper recycling industry. At the end-of-life our magazines are accepted in all local recycling systems around the UK to be circulated back into the supply chain. We are proud to have our magazines printed by Warners Midlands who have 100% of their electricity generated from renewable sources – including their own solar panel array – and are certified to the ISO14001 standard which recognises their Environmental Management System. FirstCar is paperless in our own workflows and we are committed to running all our events with the smallest environmental footprint including the elimination of single-use plastics. We have limited the use of plastic within our supply chain, you won’t find a FirstCar magazine in plastic wrapping and we are committed to taking responsibility for the plastic we do use (primarily pallet wrap) to ensure it is recycled. To further reduce the impacts of our printed products we will take a leadership role and collaborate with our print partners, waste management organisations and our industry peers to ensure how we print, what we print on and where our products end-their-life is contributing with the shift to a circular economy*
Being a publisher we have a unique opportunity to communicate with a large range of individuals and organisations. Although our focus is road safety, we are driven to use this platform to inform our readers on the solutions to creating a sustainable and just future while inspiring them to live a more sustainable lifestyle (even if that means driving less!).