Our Impact

Our work has one common goal: to deliver positive impacts for our people, our clients, and the planet.

Our impact on people and planet: 2022-23

We talk about ‘impact’ in terms of the positive effect we can have on our key stakeholders. From supporting our people to grow and thrive; to supporting organisations locally, nationally, and globally to make the most of material resources, reduce waste, and minimise their impact on the planet.

Our newest report celebrates our 2022-23 achievements, focussing on the positive impact of our project delivery and business operations.

Highlights include:

  • Launching a national action plan at the Houses of Parliament to end plastic pollution.
  • Providing a national dataset to support increased recycling performance in Wales across its 3.1 million residents.
  • Establishing our Mental Health and Wellbeing Group – including access to our newly trained team of Mental Health First Aiders and Mental Health Responders.
  • Introducing our Volunteering Policy.
  • Increasing female representation at Board level to 57% and at Executive Director level to 50%.

⁠Read our 2022-23 Impact Report⁠

Read our previous Impact Reports:

Resource Futures is a purpose-driven business and certified B Corp

The B Corp movement encourages companies to take an ethical approach to business to make a positive difference in the world – Resource Futures is committed to this through our articles of association where we are mission locked to legally prioritise environmental and social impact.

We gained our first certification in 2016 with a B Impact score of 104.2. In 2020, we re-accredited with an increased impact score of 117.6. In early 2023, we went through the assessment process for a third time, and we are awaiting the results. Our current score and its breakdown are available to view on the B Corp website.

We remain committed to continuous improvement and use this framework as an important way to push for best practice and to help tackle the climate and ecological emergencies.

Our approach

We strive to embed our ethics into everything we do and feel that the way we approach our work is an important way to influence our staff and clients in having a positive impact:

We commit to high standards: We ensure rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency through our ISO 14001 certification and maintain an ongoing commitment to minimise our environmental impacts. Our Integrated Management System (IMS) ensures we achieve the highest quality and comply with the requirements of ISO 9001:2015.

Our environmental management system challenges us to reuse and recycle in the office. We also donate surplus IT and office supplies to local charities like Children’s ScrapStore and ensure any waste electrical equipment (WEEE) is recycled and refurbished by local enterprise, Byte Back.

We aim to travel sustainably: We are members of two bike-to-work schemes and have a loan company bike at our Bristol office for local meetings. All staff are encouraged to commute on foot, by bicycle or using public transport to promote healthier journeys to work and reduce environmental pollution, and we run a regular internal travel survey to see how we’re doing. 75% of our staff travel sustainably to work by walking, cycling or using public transport.

We are carbon zero: We are proud to be a CarbonZero (carbon neutral) company. Through our carbon offsetting with co2balance we support the African Energy Efficiency project, providing local communities with energy efficient stoves and access to safe water through rehabilitation of hand-powered and solar-powered boreholes.

We protect your privacy: We are committed to protecting all data and respecting the privacy of anyone we deal with. Our Privacy Policy explains what data we collect and why, and what we do with it. Resource Futures is also committed to maintaining cyber security and is independently verified by Cyber Essentials.

We put community centre stage: Our roots are based in community action and we continue to place communities central to our ethics. We continue to operate Community Action Groups to empower and increase the impact of community led activity. We have supported projects like The Rubbish Revolution in Gambia by helping North End Barra village to introduce a basic recycling and waste management system. We successfully supported Bristol to achieve Gold accreditation as a Sustainable Food City, leading one of the two ‘areas of excellence’ required for the submission, focusing on food waste. We continue our food waste support in the lead up to plan for Bristol Good Food 2030. We have donated consultancy time to WasteAid UK, and our staff have raised funds for WasteAid UK through their sponsored walks.

We care about our suppliers: We are signed up to The Prompt Payment Code (PPC) – a voluntary code of practice for businesses, administered by the Office of the Small Business Commissioner (SBC) on behalf of BEIS. We positively aim to purchase from independent local organisations and to choose items that have a sound social and environmental impact where we can. We continue to develop a preferred local suppliers and vendors list to help drive this.

We work safely: We are accredited under the Contractors Health and Safety Assessment Scheme (CHAS), the industry authority on UK compliance and health and safety legislation. The process requires us to submit records, procedures and other documentation annually to demonstrate compliance with current health and safety legislation along with sound management based on best practice.

We value our employees: We are employee-owned and provide our employees with rewarding work, personal development, a safe working environment and a stake in our success. We are proud to be a Living Wage Employer, allowing us to provide security to all our employees, from our field work staff, conducting waste composition analysis, to our consultants. We are also Disability Confident and committed to recruiting, retaining, and developing people from the widest possible pool of talent.