Making a difference in more ways than one ….

Vitalcare are involved in the manufacture and distribution of medical consumables which means we have to use materials that are fit-for-use. We are involved in this business not least because our products improve people’s lives, and help them live with difficult conditions. Not all companies can say this and we are therefore proud to be able to.

Its also true to say that if you manufacture a product, there is a good chance that you are borrowing natural resources from the environment around you, and often these cant be replaced. Our business dictates that we use various plastics to manufacture our medical consumables, and as the materials in demand are non-biodegradable, this sits uneasily with us. Although recycling is possible to minimise the impact of our materials the final product is by definition out of our direct control, therefore we have adopted the following initiatives:

1. Carbon-Clear: We’re serious about our responsibility to tackle global climate change.
That’s why we’re delighted to be cancelling our carbon emissions with Carbon Clear,
www.carbon-clear.com.

Carbon Clear invests in projects that remove carbon dioxide from the air by replacing polluting technologies with clean ones, and planting native trees. Carbon Clear’s projects are in developing countries and are carefully screened to ensure they improve local people’s wellbeing.

We have worked with Carbon Clear to calculate the exact amount of carbon dioxide we emit, and Carbon Clear has identified projects that prevent the same amount of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. Projects range from a biogas plant in Kenya that allows villagers to stop burning charcoal and get their light and heat from renewable sources, to a tree planting cooperative in India that provides local people with food and medicines as well as soaking up carbon dioxide. All Carbon Clear’s projects are guaranteed to meet the highest standards of social development and environmental rigour.

We’ve reduced our carbon emissions as much as we can, but we all realise it’s hard to cut our pollution entirely. That’s why we’ve chosen Carbon Clear to offset our remaining carbon emissions. For more information, please visit www.carbon-clear.com.

2. Target Neutral: A scheme by BP which allows you to cancel out your road emissions by supporting projects that reduce the equivalent amount of CO2. Not only are our company cars in the UK carbon-neutral, but we also cancel out emissions produced by staff driving in China and our sub-contracted sea and road transportation vehicles.

Our donation to Target Neutral is currently supporting a project at a biomass power plant in Bihar, where agricultural bio-waste and locally grown biomass is being used to generate clean electricity for local communities. The biomass energy created is reducing CO2 emissions by 4,800 tonnes a year. That’s enough to neutralise the emissions of about 1,200 cars in the UK annually.

3. Packaging: all of our paper and box packaging is from a recycled source - we even recycle our shipping pallets many times over.

So you can see… if we’re in it, we take it seriously.