United House

CSR and the Environment

A portfolio of achievements

United House is committed to protecting and improving the physical environment of all the communities in which we work. We are making major contributions towards this with sustainable construction and low carbon refurbishment, helping reduce to fuel poverty and mitigate some of the environmental effects of climate change.

To demonstrate our commitment to the importance of environmental issues we have developed and implemented an Environmental Management System which is certified to ISO14001:2004 by SGS.

We have developed a Sustainability Policy which is supported by our Environmental Policy and our Environmental Objectives & Targets, which commits us to reducing the environmental impact of our operations. Within United House, the aim is to raise awareness of our environmental impact, cut down the amount of waste we generate, reuse materials where possible and increase our recycling, and reduce the amount of energy we use in our head office at Swanley and our site operations.

One of the ways in which we encourage staff to think and act in sustainable ways is through our regular
‘Green House’ newsletter, which was launched in 2007 following an in-house survey asking ‘how green are we’ and considering the ways we could make a difference on our own premises.

Since then, we have been making efforts to help even in small ways, such as switching off lights, recycling office rubbish and not using disposable plastic cups. Building on this, we regularly run a Staff Environmental Survey to identify areas where we could further improve our performance.

We are proud of our achievements in sustainable working. We have:

  • Achieved a London Green500 Platinum Award in June 2010 in recognition of reducing carbon emissions and fuel consumption in our vehicle fleet, improvements to office heating and lighting and improvements to waste reduction and recycling.
  • Achieved a 25% reduction in our fleet emissions by improving vehicle load factors and routing. We have recently upgraded 75% of our delivery fleet which now meet Euro 5 emission standards, and a switch to bio-diesel for all vehicles has yielded an annual saving of over four tonnes of CO2.
  • Reduced waste to landfill by over 50% since redeveloping our Environmental Management System.
  • Achieved ISO 14001:2004 certification in July 2008 for all operations of our Environmental Management System.
  • Signed up to the WRAP ‘Halve Waste to Landfill’ voluntary initiative. New build waste costs have been reduced to less than 0.2% of project value and more than 5,600 tonnes of waste has been diverted from landfill.
  • Maintained membership of the UK Green Building Council.
  • Developed an exemplar affordable, low carbon refurbishment eco-home in a Victorian terraced property
    using energy saving methods new to social housing, resulting in a 70% reduction in carbon emissions.
  • Designed the first care home to PassivHaus standards in the UK.
  • Devised new methods to achieve a 30% carbon reduction in refurbished tower blocks
  • Agreed that by 2010, all timber and timber based products we procure will meet either FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council) or PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forestry Certification) standards.
  • Recycled 100% of the cardboard and clear packaging used in the construction process.