Our Environmental Policy

 

We will encourage best environmental practice in everything we do: through the development of GB and Country woodland policies and strategies; through the management of forests in our care; through administration of grants and felling licences to other woodland owners; through the implementation and enforcement of forestry regulations; and through conducting research relevant to forestry.

We seek to be an exemplar of sustainability in all our work, and will identify the environmental impacts of all our activities and prioritise action to continually improve our environmental performance.

Specifically we will:

1.  meet all relevant environmental legislation and regulations, and other requirements to which we subscribe;

2.  implement an effective Environmental Management System, fulfil the requirements of the UK Woodland Assurance Standard, pursue continuous improvement through internal and external audit, and through management review programmes;

3.  set challenging environmental targets to reduce energy and resource consumption, reduce the amount of waste we generate, minimise the use of harmful materials, and prevent pollution. In particular we will:

• work to ensure that goods and services procured by the Commission support our environmental policy and, in turn, encourage our suppliers and contractors to improve their own environmental performance; and

• develop and implement an environmentally aware transport plan for business travel, and staff commuting, and produce a Forestry Commission fleet policy.

4.  monitor and review progress against internal and Government targets.

To do this we:

• set up a sustainable development project and project group (Greenerways), responsible to the Executive Board, to oversee our environmental strategy, management, and performance;
  
• will maintain a high level of awareness of sustainability issues amongst our employees, and integrate environmental management into training; and
  
• pursue continuous improvement through management and external review programmes.

This policy will be reviewed annually, and updated as appropriate.