More Than A Principle, A Defined And Measured Commitment
There’s a lot of talk about sustainability today, and that’s a great thing. At Heritage, we love being a part of every possible effort we can undertake to make our natural environment the best it can be. But in 2011, we took it a step further by asking: What does “sustainability” really mean, how can we measure it, and how can we prove we’re living up to it?
It led to an initiative that Heritage continues today. We’ve laid out our commitments in four areas of sustainability, and we report on them to the public with total transparency. Heritage has been reporting via the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and showing year-over-year improvements since 2012. We have committed to follow the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) framework and guidance as our program matures with formal qualitative and quantitative metrics and improvement targets It’s part of the better visibility we strive to give to our customers.
The four areas of sustainability are: people, planet, profit, and patrons. Here are their definitions.
People
Heritage is committed to the safety of its employees and its customers’ employees. We attract and retain a quality, diverse workforce and continually administer and improve their training. We strive to be a good neighbor that contributes to the incredible communities in which we’re located.
Planet
Compliance is a minimum standard, but we strive to always increase the re-use of waste materials. We seek to expand natural habitats not only through landfill reduction, but also through proactive efforts to create wildlife and nature refuge areas. We believe in reducing the footprints of our own, and those of our customers, from waste to transportation.
Profit
Decreasing energy usage reduces energy costs and waste, and Heritage aggressively cuts energy consumption wherever possible, but we don’t stop there. We also identify other materially significant resources and target them for efficiencies or overall reduction. We monitor and optimize utilization of all our assets to ensure smart capital investments don’t sit idle or cause redundancies.
Patrons
We continue to make big investments into research and development to find new waste re-use options. We target and achieve high compliance standards with hundreds of regulators, and those ethical business practices lead to satisfied, long-term customers. We take responsibility for our service performance, and provide transparency into that responsibility so our customers know what’s going on, every step of the way.
We’re confident that our commitments are worthy goals and that we will continue to live up to them.
