Resource Efficiency and Waste Management

We have food waste recycling. And we have cardboard compaction with free collection for recycling.

Our food waste recycling is close to cost-neutral and our cardboard compactor paid for itself in 17 months, going on to save us approximately £3,000 every year.

We’ve installed a much larger mill-sized cardboard baler and a smaller one for plastics at our Support Centre in Poole, Dorset, so that volumes are reduced and recycling is increased – reducing costs and generating an additional income. 

We have a strong recycling ethos across the RNLI. Recycling bins are installed at our Support Centre in Poole and we’re working with our regional bases, support centres, lifeboat stations and other locations to ensure as much waste as possible is eliminated, recycled and diverted from landfill.

When they reach the end of their service lives, RNLI lifejackets are decommissioned. In the past to save them going to landfill we completed a pilot project where we upcycled them into a hard-wearing and water-resistant product range, complete with many original lifejacket features.

This initiative saved the RNLI £17,000 in disposal costs and generated tens of thousands of pounds’ income over the 5 year period with 100% of the profits going directly back into our lifesaving service. 

What to do with a 27-tonne lifeboat

To maximise the lifespan of our Lifeboat fleet and ensure they remain up to date with modern technology and materials we do periodic refits and upgrades to extend their service life. We are also considering and using alternative fuels and ways to power our assets such as biofuels including HVO (Hydro treated vegetable oil) and electric with the use of a XEP (daughter) boat.

When our Lifeboats come to the end of their operational life with us our Asset Sales Manager is often able to sell them for various maritime second life uses recovering money back to the RNLI to support future lifesaving. However, there is no guarantee that we will be able to sell every lifeboat in the future and therefore some may require disposal. 

Our biggest challenge is that modern composites used in Lifeboat construction are very strong and notoriously difficult to recycle. The recycling infrastructure in the UK and Ireland doesn’t really exist at scale yet. 

As we’ve all seen, single-use plastics (SUPS) is a big problem in the environment and a particular threat to wildlife in the sea. At the RNLI, we aim to eliminate or reduce single us plastics wherever we practically can.

This is going to be a challenge because we can’t always control where SUPs come from – such as supplier packaging. Some of the available alternatives also present their own environmental or safety issues, so the choices between alternatives are not always simple. However we’re working with our suppliers to eliminate, reduce or replace SUPs wherever possible and we ask all our people to diligently recycle or dispose of all SUPs they currently use, to prevent them from becoming litter.

We’ve already made some good progress towards our goal:

• Our supporter magazines will be delivered in certified FSC or PEFC sustainable and recyclable paper wrap and envelopes, not plastic wrap.

• Our Christmas cards are all SUP- and glitter-free. We may still have some older stock packaged in SUP and with glitter, but these will soon be sold through. 

• Our calendars are all SUP-free. 

• Working with our suppliers, the Retail Team have removed or replaced SUP packaging on some of our products and have swapped out some plastic products with alternatives. This process is ongoing.

• We’ve stopped mailing out annual plastic membership stickers marked with the year – saving tens of thousands of bits of plastic each year. 

• The RNLI College removed plastics bottles, straws, cups and stirrers and registered as a water refill station.

• Plastic cups were removed from all the offices at our Poole campus and people now use their own refillable mugs, glasses and bottles. 

• We no longer supply single use plastic carrier bags in any of our shops. 

• We’ve introduced reusable shopping bags made from recycled plastic and other materials, recycling over 300,000 plastic bottles in 2024. 

While this is a good start, we know we have much more to do. We’re now focussing our efforts on gaining a better understanding where the biggest volume of SUPs are coming from and then prioritising eliminating them, or finding alternatives where available and affordable. 

Some SUPs are not currently avoidable – for example, those around sterile medical dressings and PPE. So, for now, we have no choice but to continue using them. Our people ensure that this packaging is recycled or disposed of and does not end up in the environment. 

Fresh water is an important resource, and we encourage all our people to use water efficiently.

Aerators are fitted to all bathroom taps and showers in the bedrooms at the RNLI College to reduce water use. 

The use of water and chemical-dosing in our Sea Survival Centre training pool is carefully controlled. 

By definition, many of our activities are on or near water and we strive to ensure we don’t pollute or contaminate it.

As part of our risk management process, we require our people at all locations to consider the potential for spills and leaks to occur and cause pollution of the aquatic environment. As part of our safety management approach, we take proactive action to eliminate or reduce spill risks to as low as reasonably possible. We also ensure our people have the knowledge, skills and equipment to respond quickly to prevent pollution occurring or limit environmental damage and safely clean up spilt substances. If the worst does happen and substances enter water, it’s reported immediately to the relevant authorities and through our own internal incident reporting system. This is then reviewed for lessons learned after the incident has been dealt with and any required changes are implemented. 

We are also examining the opportunities from consolidating our water supply contracts. 

Our lifeboat stations

Sustainability is at the forefront of all our building projects. When new lifeboat stations and other sites are built, we endeavour to use sustainable building materials and install the most suitable and cost-effective renewable technologies as standard.

To keep costs down, where possible, we use consistent designs and specifications for building and maintaining our lifeboat stations. However, many of our lifeboat stations are in exposed locations where there are environmental and planning restrictions, so we inevitably have to customise our plans, resulting in unique designs, architecture and construction techniques.

The sensitive nature of some lifeboat station sites – whether as listed buildings or located in designated conservation areas – can also result in protracted, and sometimes controversial, planning processes.