Taking steps to reduce our environmental impact

Date: 2 Aug 2018
Author: Hill Laboratories

One of the core components of the Hill Laboratories ‘reason for being’ (our mission statement) is making a difference for our customers by helping them to minimise their environmental impact, and as such we have made several in-roads recently in this area.

These include reducing waste of our high-use smaller poly-bins by adding a recyclable outer. Poly-bins are used widely in our laboratory business due to their insulating properties however with roughly 1,100 being recycled annually in Christchurch alone, we decided to take a deeper look into ways we could extend their life.

With the major reasons for disposal of poly-bins being wear-and-tear or contamination, we are hoping that if we protect the outside of the poly-bin with a recyclable cardboard box and the inside with a compostable 'plastic' bag (a sustainable solution to single use plastic bags), we can extend the life of our poly-bins. The new packaging will be trialed out of Christchurch initially.

We are also looking to reduce our paper waste by moving to electronic reports. This will allow you to receive your results much faster and you will have an electronic record for the future. Changing to emailed reports is easy, simple email office@hill-labs.co.nz with your contact details and email address. If you are currently receiving both print and email, please let us know and we will update to email only.