Handmade Marketing was instrumental in the development of a new system of reporting on the waste management process for the McGrath Group.

In early 2013 the group decided to research the feasibility of developing systems to gather data on carbon emissions generated during the waste management process and to make the report compatible with Scope 3 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reporting protocol.  This was in response to a growing need for more accurate data on indirect emissions created during the waste management process.

McGrath asked Handmade to work with their in-house Environmental Team looking into the practicability of developing a methodology for calculating the energy expended during each stage of the waste process. The system, which calculates the CO2 generated during the collection, sorting and re-processing of each waste transaction needed to be independently verified and accredited against the International Standard for  GHG Reporting, ISO 14064 part 3.

“The development took 18 months and involved extensive testing.  Waiting for verification and accreditation was a particularly anxious time – but it was all worthwhile,” said Fergus McCloskey, Managing Director of Handmade Marketing.  “We are proud to have been involved in such an innovative product.”

The new report format also provides a breakdown of destinations of clients’ wastes by hierarchy categories i.e. re-use, recycling, recovery and disposal making it also compatible with the Waste Regulations.

“We were determined that the data should be easily extracted by McGrath’s clients so that they could use it for their own environmental reporting systems. At the same time it would demonstrate compliance with Scope 3 GHG Reporting, the Waste Regulations and in-house sustainability targets – a first in the UK!”

Naturally, Handmade were retained in the resultant media campaign to promote the report to industry. A press release to the FM, Construction and Environmental media was combined with a social media campaign and series of features articles published in Materials Recycling World (MRW), Public Sector Sustainability, FM World and Construction Update magazines.

The new report format was launched in December 2014, a sample can be downloaded from www.mcgrathgroup.co.uk/waste-report.