SureScreen Diagnostics Ltd. designs, manufactures, stock holds, and distributes small medical diagnostic equipment.

As a company, we take our environmental responsibilities very seriously, and it is our policy to meet and exceed all relevant regulatory requirements to minimise any adverse environmental effects SureScreen has as a result of our activities or products.

We continually assess and improve the environmental impact of our operations by minimising materials and resources, reducing our wastage to the lowest practical level and being thoughtful about our business processes to ensure that our environmental impact isn’t overlooked. Where disposal of waste is unavoidable, it is SureScreen’s policy to recycle where economically possible.

Employee involvement in environmental matters is important at all levels and is promoted through training, communications and a constant reappraisal of working methods and techniques. Even simple examples, like environmental messages on company email footers, paper-free offices, and incentives to keep promotional literature electronic help instill an environmentally conscious workforce.

Our company management system includes annual environmental objectives, assessments of impact on the environment, and targets. Performance is measured against these targets and is reviewed regularly. This includes reviewing any contaminant items to ensure that they are recycled or disposed of in a suitable way that will leave little impact on the environment.

Manufacturing
SureScreen works with many environmentally conscious materials in the production and packing stages of products. We are BRC, ISO9001 and ISO13845 accredited and try to maximise manufacturing in the UK where possible, which is good for the UK economy but also means raw products are processed on-site requiring less transport impact.

Transportation
SureScreen holds a lot of product stock in order to be responsive and flexible to our customers. We have several depots around the world to reduce increased mileage on products and we work with couriers and shipping companies to ensure products are shipped in the most economical fashion and in sizes most manageable for shipping companies. In-house manufacturing also helps to reduce these numbers.

We have several programmes to reduce shipping waste. Our headquarters even has outdoor seating constructed from old shipping pallets that are no longer fit for purpose (but make great seats!) We make a large effort to reduce travel footprints for our employees through remote training incentives, electronic marketing material and video conferencing. Face-to-face meetings are of course still important but are employed economically where this doesn’t affect customer service.

Product Use
The nature of many of our products are quick-use rapid tests. However, giving our customers on-site results in a timely and accurate way often avoids further invasive and environmentally unkind practices. Many of our products are recyclable and we encourage our customers to recycle. Where this isn’t possible we do run recycling programmes on our customer’s behalf. In the lab we have clinical waste disposed of responsibly using a well-known ethical contract-based supplier.

Facilities
Our facilities are environmentally effective workplaces with plenty of light and recycling procedures in place. But we feel obliged to do much more than that. The heating for our headquarters is sourced from ground heat, so doesn’t rely on fossil fuel, and is based in country grounds we maintain to a high standard. Our facilities are also super-insulated to hold heat in the cold months.