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Other Environmental Factors

Contents

About This Report

HSE Performance

Social Performance

Economic Performance

Looking Ahead

Whilst the principal environmental impact of the GBUs comes from energy, waste, discharges and CO₂ emissions, we recognise other ways in which our operations affect the environment.

Biodiversity and Contamination

We are conscious of the effect of planting and landscaping both in making our sites more pleasant places in which to work, and in providing the opportunity in maintaining biodiversity. A thorough survey is undertaken when purchasing new property to establish what contamination exists and we take care to carry out surveys and take any remedial action to ensure that our land is not blighted by concerns about contamination. The most recent example was a ground water contamination survey following a partial demolition of a building at the Wound Management factory at Hull and a survey of ground contamination at the site of a new Advanced Woundcare facility in Suzhou China.

Transport

We recognise that the transport of our products and staff travel may make a significant contribution to our CO2 emissions. Transport and travel are arranged through service providers with whom we continue to work to obtain reliable data on the miles travelled and consequential CO2 emissions.

Some of our transport companies are now able to provide information about the CO2 emissions arising from the transport of goods. However, estimates are currently available only for those shipments within the USA and the model used has not been validated. We will continue to work with service providers so that more complete and validated results can be published in the future.

At a practical level, there is a rationale for the mode of transport used which has regard for the nature of the products and the environmental impact of the mode of transport. Products from Orthopaedic Reconstruction, Trauma and Clinical Therapies and Endoscopy are, in general, small volume, high value. They are used in the surgical trauma arena and delivered to order, being required without delay. They are usually sent by air. Advanced Wound Management products are large volume, lower value and supplied from stock. These products are usually sent by sea and truck. Initiatives have begun to ensure that only full cases are shipped to customers. Some work has been done in providing distribution hubs to improve the efficiency of transport operations.

Travel is inevitable in a global operation, however, we recognise that this can be limited by using modern telecommunications where we can, or ensuring that trips are made which combine more than one purpose.

We monitor data on air miles travelled by employees from our UK and USA operations (the great majority of journeys made) and estimates have been made for the journeys originating elsewhere.

(per 200,000 hours worked)	2006	2007
Air miles originating from the USA	53,678,603	60,596,845
Air miles originating from UK	13,834,712*	15,042,112
Air miles originating elsewhere (est)	6,000,000*	6,500,000
Total	73,513,315	82,138,957
Car Rental US	916,171	781,182
Car Rental UK	41,674	41,115
Car Rental Est	41,674	41,115

* Previous year’s figures have been revised in the light of more reliable information from service providers.

Energy, Waste, Emissions and Discharges