With the pressing need to place environmental concern as a paramount issue, we can confirm that Corporate Environment Responsibility has long been a priority on our company agenda, and our range of green initiatives – practiced since 2008, are succeeding in delivering results that exceed expectation.

As a company committed to ‘making the most of a resource’, we have invested in process and improvement for over a decade; a move that’s enabled our PVC window, fascia, gutter and cladding system products to last longer, and prove suitable for effective recycling up to eight times or more.

With an active connection to The Epwin Group Brief – A British Plastics Federation initiative devised to challenge lifecycle costs – and a Climate Change Agreement in place with the Environment Agency (EA), we have pledged to strive for change and deliver environmentally beneficial results, designed to make a real difference.

Set with an industry sector efficiency target by the EA, we were challenged to reduce our energy intensity by 20 percent before the end of 2020; compared to the company’s base-line year of 2008. Currently consuming 30.8 percent less energy than 12 years ago, we have already used the EA initiative to position ourselves ahead of the sector target, as Alan Tunnicliffe, Process Improvement Manager at Swish, explains:

“As an environmentally conscious company, Swish is fully committed to creating a sustainable future and believes that responsibly manufactured PVC can play a harmonious role within that. We’re constantly working with environmental partners towards developing a circular PVC economy, and have significantly researched appropriate production methods to support full recyclability. 

“By introducing a ‘right first-time’ manufacturing strategy, we’ve succeeded in delivering an efficient and sustainable operating route; designed to prevent the waste associated with installations from directly entering landfill.

“We’re proud of our achievement in becoming a zero landfill operation; committed to recovering the pre-used PVC from our on-site activities for recycling, and separating cardboard, office paper, polythene from packaging, metals and food waste, before any remaining materials are forwarded to a waste partner for general waste recovery.”

To enable our products to be ‘continuously’ recycled, we have consistently ensured the PVC used within building materials comprises high levels of stability and appropriate stabilisers to allow successful extrusion into new PVC articles.

To achieve the process, PVC recycling equipment - including two onsite granulators and a pulveriser - are used to downsize all of our pre-used PVC products to a fine powder for effective re-processing, and a number of recycling cages and onsite compactors sort various waste streams.

“As a company, we believe that taking a sustainable, operational approach should be considered a day-to-day function. Our ever-improving manufacturing methods have indisputably minimised our environmental impact and have enabled us to feed directly into The Epwin Group’s brief to challenge industry lifecycle costs.

“We’re constantly striving to do more, and by benefiting from the environmental commitments of our best assets – our employees – we will continue to identify further opportunities to help us become even more sustainable.

“Reducing the Swish carbon footprint has become a key element of our community responsibility, in conjunction with the greater issue of climate change, and we have committed to successfully delivering a further 20 percent reduction in our energy intensity - based on our base-line year of 2018 - by 2030.

“We’re confident that together, we will achieve this goal as we endeavour to research additional routes, methods and practices that will further excel Swish’s Corporate Environment Responsibilities.”