By Kerry Mole, head of sustainability & compliance at Renolit.
As a company, Renolit place an increasing emphasis on our environmental impact. Firstly, we currently have ISO 5001 and ISO 14001 accreditations which help to reflect the commitment that we have to environmental stewardship and ethical business practices.
Further measures we are undertaking include lowering our resource consumption and increasing our usage of renewable power sources which has been underlined through our recent installation of solar carports and installation of solar panels across our warehouse roof.
Renolit is also seeking to increase the amount of recycling that we undertake. As part of the recycling initiative, we have a policy of zero waste to landfill.
We are undertaking a wide range of measures to ensure that the production of our films can be as sustainable as possible. This starts with the design stage, where we focus on product longevity and recyclability, and ensures that our products can be efficiently recycled, reducing waste and conserving resources.
Renolit also prioritises the use of sustainable materials, including recycled and renewable raw materials. We work closely with our suppliers to ensure that our materials are sourced responsibly before they even arrive at our factory.
This has resulted in us being able to offer our customers a range of polymer products with a high content of recycled materials. In addition, many of our products are 100% recyclable, helping to contribute to a circular economy.
We have increased the level of flake rework within our products and have also targeted our product wastage. This has been made possible through high levels of investment to granulate and pulverise our offcuts which has allowed us to reuse this as rework within our products.
We have achieved a 16.8% reduction in our energy consumption on site since 2020, and over the last 10 years we have reduced our carbon emissions by 47%. This has primarily been achieved through reducing energy consumption and improving efficiency on our machines. Our target for the end of 2045 will be net zero.
Freefoam partnership
One partnership we are particularly proud of is our relationship with Freefoam Building Products. Currently, we supply a quantity of excess material to Freefoam which has innovated and refined its processes to be able to use our interior or exterior flake material in its fully recyclable rainwater systems.
By August 2025, we had already surpassed our annual target quantity of flake supplied to Freefoam, demonstrating how circularity can be achieved through innovation and partnership.
Further to the partnership with Freefoam, we are taking part in a range of other initiatives such as Operation Clean Sweep. This is an international initiative designed to prevent plastic pellet, flake and powder loss from entering the environment.
Renolit signed up to this initiative in 2020 to achieve zero pellet loss and to ensure no polymers leave the cycle that could result in marine and environmental litter.
Renolit is also part of the Circular Plastics Alliance (CPA) to help promote greater sustainability. This is a voluntary pledge which businesses can opt in to and helps to deliver on the circular economy for plastics and aims to substantially increase the use of recycled plastics into new products.
Currently Renolit is using Neovyn resin which is made with fossil fuels but is produced with green energy. Neovyn offers a 37% lower carbon footprint than the European industry average for suspension PVC.
We can also offer bio-attributed PVC products in order to reduce our carbon footprint even further.
Renolit UK has also recently installed solar panels on the factory roof and on our brand-new carports which will be able to generate 10% of our power requirements. Other future plans include aiming to achieve energy savings of more than 10% by 2027 compared to 2020 at our Cramlington factory, working to reduce our carbon footprint by 5% each year and a group target to ensure our packaging consists of 50% recycled materials or renewable raw materials.
