UK Truck and Plant Group

Winners of the IMI's Presidents Award 2023

Environmental, Sustainability and Green Innovation in Learning and Automotive

As director of UKTP, we have pushed our drive as a business to become carbon-negative, and believe to be the first commercial workshops in the UK to do so. Our environmental policy pushes the drive for a paperless office, limiting our carbon footprint, using new technology for meetings removing the need to travel, and also means we now recycle around 91% of all the waste we generate as a business, including engine oils, coolant, filters, metal, scrap etc.

Our recent addition to the fleet sees our existing support vehicles move to an entirely electric fleet, driving a fuel saving of around 60% in the business and reducing our carbon footprint by 28 tonnes per month. As a business, we are now proud to say that our own recovery trucks, and low loaders, can be regarded as carbon neutral. Our mobile mechanic vehicles are also set to be replaced; having changed our range and operational layout, we can carry out vital repairs to the customer fleet, maintaining their fleet and uptime whilst impacting the climate the least.

We have partnered with carbonfootprint, in order to achieve carbon neutral status on the business (currently) and expect to be able to claim we are carbon negative by spring 2023 once our final electric vehicles have been delivered. All fuel, waste, electric, and gas usage is uploaded to their portal monthly to generate our carbon figures, and offset with recognised partners and projects, such as wind farms, rainforest replanting and local schemes.

As part of our Covid response plan, the business looked at other ways of sourcing parts, which had become unavailable due to manufacturer supplies diminishing. As such, we created our reuse and recondition team, who rework items such as alternators, compressors, air valves, EBS and ABS modules, plus a full team for engine reconditioning in-house. Not only does this allow us, to supply and repair vehicles for customers, which would not usually be possible, but we reduce the waste generated and in fact, recycle the majority of all units put in for reworking. We are able to give the customer a 6-12 months warranty on the recycled part and the benefit of lower costs whilst reducing our waste impact on the environment. Our teams paid on bonus for parts reused and recycled, even down to kitchen waste all being recycled into compost., and the caretaking team re-sorting waste before disposing of such is covered with a bonus scheme.

Our carbon offsetting scheme with carbon footprint supports local, and charitable work, whilst offsetting our emissions, such as tree planting in schools, whilst educating children about climate change. We are also the main sponsor for the Bedford Blues Foundation for 2022-23, helping encourage teenagers who may have fallen out of education for reasons relating to drugs, behavior or alcohol, into roles within the workplace, to learn about sustainable logistics, and encourage them to pursue a career within the motor trade or logistics industry.