‘Synonymous and urgent’: WJ Group talks about climate change and air quality

‘Synonymous and urgent’: WJ Group talks about climate change and air quality

WJ Group is one of the UK’s leading road safety and highway maintenance businesses. Many of its workers provide road markings and are effectively vulnerable road users in the course of their working day. They are also very vulnerable to air pollution caused by traffic. Moreover the company sees climate change as an existential threat to our planet, and that its fleet is its greatest contributor to its carbon impact.

As such it prioritises controlling work-related road risk, and its impact upon climate change and air quality. Sustainability director Paul Aldridge emphasises that these are not separate issues but “synonymous and urgent”.

Road safety brings environmental benefits, he says, and environmental measures mitigate public health risks, as well as the risks to us all of global warming.

WJ Group operations

The business specialises in delivering road markings, road studs, high friction and coloured safety surfacing, retexturing, crack and joint sealing, industrial surface preparation, marine surface coatings, TASCAR, CCTV, Stopped Vehicle Detection and has just introduced Air Quality Monitors, as well as other Intelligent Traffic Solutions services and products.

Overall, the business has 13 depots, including two material manufacturing plants, two vehicle fabrication facilities, a driver training academy and vehicle workshop support at each depot. It has over 650 employees, and a fleet of more than 400 vehicles.

Its fleet is essential to its work, and WJ takes its control of its vehicles to an unusual degree, by building its own specialist trucks.

Decarbonisation

The Race2NetZero is an urgent priority for WJ Group. It measures, and has independently verified, its Scope 1 and 2 emissions and produce monthly fleet reports of CO₂ as well as air quality emissions such as NO_x, PMs, CO and hydrocarbons.

The WJ fleet has the biggest environmental impact using three million litres of diesel annually. The company instituted a driver behaviour initiative, including Quartix telematics and incentives for good driving. This increased mpg by 12% and reduced CO₂ emissions by 7.5%, equivalent to 594 tonnes of CO₂ or 225,000 litres of diesel, over 18 months.

Alt-fuelled vehicles

WJ Group is already planning its shift to alternative-fuelled vehicles. Battery electric vehicles may prove the best option, even for the heavier vehicles in the fleet, as they typically do a very small mileage and so range is not a concern. The company says it is two years away from developing its first EV road-marking truck, which should allow operations to be quieter, which is important for night-time working and community impact, as well as delivering zero tailpipe emissions.

All its cars are now electric or hybrid, and its vans will be too by 2026. “Our vans do considerable mileage,” says Paul, “but we have plans in place to make this happen.”

The company has also planted 327,000 trees in Scotland to help offset its carbon emissions.

Cutting embodied carbon

The road marking materials used to ‘paint’ the roads are a mixture of aggregates, reflective elements, a binder system, and coloured pigment. WJ Group has found that simply by switching from a hydrocarbon binder system to a biogenic system (a plant-based solution) it has reduced the embodied carbon of these materials by 80%.

It also uses mainly recycled materials, up to 90% in many products. Overall, this has removed 20,000 tonnes of CO₂equivalent annually.

Sustainability director Paul Aldridge says: “We all face the existential risk of global warming. Mitigating the impacts and moving to Net Zero are fundamental to us all. Improving air quality is also a key factor for us. Our workforce is constantly exposed to the particulate pollution caused by road traffic, which is a major public health concern. These issues are synonymous and urgent, and we must all address them, in every way we can. Mitigating road risk is vital to us, bringing us back to our value statement ‘Creating Safe, Sustainable Journeys for Everyone’.”

 

 

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