Planet vs. Plastics: How we’re celebrating Earth Day 2024

With this year’s theme focusing on the impact of plastics, we’re highlighting some of the ways we’ve already reduced the volume of plastic waste we generate and what more we still need to do.

Rolls-Royce vs. Plastics

At Rolls-Royce, we seek to operate and act in an ethically, environmentally and socially responsible way that means we can continue to deliver value for our people, our customers and our societies on a long-term basis.

Our sustainability approach aims to ensure we’re a responsible and resilient business through understanding and managing the environmental and social impact of our operations. As part of this approach, we’ve set out clear corporate targets to help drive our waste reduction initiatives:

• Reduce total solid and liquid waste in our operations and facilities by 25% by 2025, normalised by revenue
• Increase the recycling and recovery rate to 68% by 2025 whilst maintaining zero non-hazardous waste to landfill

Since 2018, we’ve halved the volume of our plastic waste and increased our plastic recycling rate by over 25%. Alongside achieving those targets, many of the solutions we’re putting in place deliver additional benefits from reducing associated carbon emissions to saving on costs and keeping valuable materials in circulation. But we know there’s still work to be done.

How we’re tackling plastic across the business

Across our businesses, we’ve been working in different ways to focus on waste reduction. This includes optimising packaging in our Civil Aerospace business. From minimising fresh air shipments to removing plastic materials such as foam inserts and developing a returnable packaging programme, the solutions put in place so far have already driven a CO2e reduction of 11,400 tonnes.

In Bristol, our Defence team has been trialling a programme to turn plastic waste into useful 3D printed items like miniature aircraft models. This not only reduces the volume of plastic packaging waste but also reduces the emissions associated with transporting goods.

Elsewhere, our Power Systems business is replacing the plastic film packaging of the roughly 100 engines they receive for maintenance and repair every year with reusable containers. Likewise, they’ve switched to a new packaging material for metal components which prevents the formation of rust and is based on natural components, replacing the previous blue plastic film and allowing it to be recycled.

Across all of our facilities, single use plastics represent a huge opportunity to improve our environmental impact. Our Derby facility has been leading the way by finding reusable or recyclable alternatives for everything from the soap bottles in the bathrooms to the drinking water on site and even the dry cleaning packaging.

A day everyone can get involved

This Earth Day, we’re also running a host of activities around the globe to encourage all our people to get involved and reflect on the impact we have as a business.

In the UK, US and Singapore, for example, we’re participating in the Big Plastic Count and weighing the plastic waste generated throughout the day. Our catering providers in the UK and the US will be sharing their sustainability journeys and encouraging the use of reusable cups. We’ll also be screening some short films focused on plastic waste and innovative solutions to the problem at our Pop-Up Cinemas.