Greening a Family Business with County Battery Services
Business Background
County Battery Services is a family-run business with over 40 years’ experience in servicing customer’s needs within the battery industry. Their head office, warehouse distribution centre and a small shop is based in Kirkby-in- Ashfield; and you can find accompanying shops in Nutall and Ilkeston. County Battery stock batteries for modern and classic cars, commercial vehicles, motorcycles, industrial, mobility, emergency, alarm, cordless phones, digital cameras, and battery-operated toys.
Environmental Responsibility
Managing Director Richard Fuller takes environmental responsibility seriously and constantly strives to reduce the environmental impact of the business by reducing waste materials, energy use and the impact of the products supplied.
County Battery Services integrate an open-loop system into their core business model. Much of what they do involves recycling battery products, therefore diverting them from landfill. This not only helps to keep the their own carbon footprint to a minimum, it also reduces their customers carbon footprint too.
The business has its own industrial cardboard shredder, which makes waste cardboard useable packaging material. The company even collects waste cardboard from other local businesses in which cancels out the need to buy new packaging material.
How did we help?
County Battery Services joined iiE via the Factory-funded programme, run in collaboration with Nottingham Trent University Business School in October 2014. County Battery was partnered with a group of 5 final-year students, who were trained in environmental management by the iiE team and acted as sustainability consultants to the business. The students used resource data to calculate the carbon footprint of the business and identified further ways in which they could make energy savings.
Following the student project, County Battery put together an environmental management plan and implemented an environmental policy. This has helped them to record the amount of waste produced, the amount of batteries recycled and led to a clear recycling system throughout all office sites.
Key Achievements:
- In 2014/15, County Battery recycled 229.36 tonnes of batteries.
- As the recycling of batteries is part of the core business model of County Battery, the business is saving carbon by diverting batteries from landfill (a much higher producer of carbon).
- County Battery collects waste cardboard from customers and other local businesses, which is then shredded and used as packaging for battery products.
- County Battery have just installed a wind turbine on top of their warehouse!