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Sustainability
CONSIDERING AND DEVELOPING OFFERINGS FOR A RESPONSIBLE, SUSTAINABLE FUTURE
ENVIRONMENTAL STATEMENT
Over the past few years, RGE have made a conscious effort to put reducing our environmental impact at the forefront of our operations. We look forward to seeing the expansion of our solar energy installation at our Whittlesey site, building upon our 250kwh system, so that on a sunny summer’s day the operation at Whittlesey can be powered almost entirely by the sun.
The capabilities of our in-house recycling facility continue to increase, due to significant investment over the last three years. The launch of our impressive new Temple chair, made from recycled materials, acts a landmark, signalling a shift in the industry to using recycled materials to create high quality furniture.
RGE is committed to pushing for a sustainable future across all aspects of the business, today and tomorrow.
A word from Dan:
REGRIND
Recycle old, worn, or damaged plastics
SOLAR ENERGY
Investing in sustainable energy options
OUR RANGE
Creating recyclable products from recycled materials
CIRCULAR PLASTICS
RGE's vision for the future centres around creating a circular economy for plastics. This means that materials constantly flow around a closed loop system, rather than being used once and then discarded. In turn, this simultaneously retains the value of plastic in the economy, without leakage into the natural environment. Plastic products can be recycled again and again after use, creating an endless circle which reuses the same material to create new products, keeping plastic out of landfill and preventing the need to create more virgin plastics. The precedent set by this circular approach to plastics puts sustainable consumption at the foundation of the business.SUSTAINABILITY IN THE FACTORY
RGE has made significant capital investment in the expansion of our solar energy installation at our Whittlesey site. The project builds upon the existing 250kwh system, installed in 2018, and when completed will mean that the installed solar panels will be just under a 1MWh system. This means that on a sunny summer’s day the operation at Whittlesey can be powered almost entirely by the sun.Our factory at Whittlesey also makes use of our Thingtrax IT system, which allows us to schedule which machines will run each day in order to use the least amount of energy whilst providing the highest and most efficient levels of production. This optimises the production process whilst reducing the carbon footprint of running our injection moulding machines.We use our own range of returnable transit packaging on the factory floor, helping to eliminate the use of one trip packaging. Any damaged, worn, or old packaging is reground into plastic material to be used again at our onsite Regrind Centre.
HISTORY
Ever since RGE began moulding in the 1960s, recycling has been at the heart of our operation. Regrinding the cold runner, or sprue, on many jobs was typical when utilising a machine-side sprue grinder, and often this regrind material was dosed back into the melt to be completely circular.Injection moulding as a process creates little-to-no waste due to the precision engineering used to create each tool. Unlike other processes, this means that there is no excess, wasting resources and energy in the production of products.Investing in our range of returnable transit packaging and our array of furniture has placed a reduced environmental impact at the forefront of our criteria when developing long lasting and sustainable products. RGE challenges the accepted approach to using virgin plastics, and pushes for innovation to highlight the importance of using recycled materials across all industries.
REGRIND CENTRE
On top of the internal recycling of raw material, RGE has a number of large regrind machines which give us the capability to recycle more than 20 tonnes of raw material per day.Following the launch of our in-house recycling facility in 2021, the Regrind Centre, RGE are now able to offer a buy back service, processing any extra stock or old products to be recycled back into material which can be reused in the production of new product or goods parts.The centre is capable of processing PP, ABS, PA, TPE, and PBT + PET, and will be expanding to grind other plastics as they become available.Recently, RGE have been making recycled polymer grades of our own to use in new products. The grades now available are Recycled Polypropylene, Recycled Glass Filled Polypropylene and Recycled Glass Filled Nylon, all of which are made using outside material inputs.