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 Our company was founded over 50 years ago in the lower mainland of British Columbia. We have grown in our business surrounded by the very forests and ocean that make our province such a special place to both live and work. We value such a relationship of these surroundings and, as a result, conduct our daily company activities with the preservation of our environment forefront in our policies and procedures as outlined below. Our plant carries a wide variety of paper products and features, including many papers that contain recycled waste material. Within our plant, we gather all waste paper material generated from production of orders, all equipment and all departments. Waste paper from our office also enters this stream through separate depository bins and all is collected by an outside service for recycling purposes. Westkey is also FSC Chain of Custody certified. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is an international, membership-based, non-profit organization that supports environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world's forests. Forest certification is a voluntary market mechanism through which forests are certified against a strict set of environmental and social standards, and all producers and manufacturers along the supply chain are certified to ensure that the final product bearing the FSC logo actually originated from a certified forest. Chain of Custody certification is the process by which forest products are tracked from the forest all the way to the end consumer. All successive stages of processing, transformation, manufacturing and distribution must receive a Chain of Custody certificate for labeled products to be sold. The vast majority of inks used at our company are vegetable based. Our ink is pre-measured before loading into our fountains and any unused portion is removed and remixed for future use, thus eliminating needless waste. Our fountain solutions are collected into a series of waste tanks that are filtered to remove any sludge, impurities, etc. We then neutralize the PH balance of the filtered water before disposing. The collected sludge is in turn recycled by an outside service. Our film is disassembled and then the plastic is recycled through an outside plastic recycling service. The film is recycled for silver recovery as well. All metal plates used in the manufacturing process are fully recycled as is all metal strapping and other waste metal. Any metal drums that we might use are returned to the initial supplier for reuse. All solutions used in the film making process are completely contained and recovered by an outside service who in turn neutralizes the solution before recycling or disposing of same. Much of our roll paper stock arrives bubble wrapped in plastic to ensure minimal damage in transit and maximum yield to our end clients. We gather all of this plastic wrap, along with shrink wrap waste and any other plastic containers and material that enter our waste material flow. It is picked up by our waste paper handler and recycled. The only wood we encounter at our premise is with regards to pallets for storage and shipping purposes. Any damaged or broken pallets are picked up by our pallet provider who in turn breaks them down and uses the material to remanufacture additional pallets. Any waste wood deemed unusable for remanufacture is sent to a recycler for chipping. These wood chips often are used for the manufacture of pulp. We continue to strive for even better corporate responsibility as we move forward and grow with our valued customers. Our suppliers are encouraged to lead the way in environmental standards and to bring to our firm products and services that allow us to be better at what we do for our environment and that of our valued clients. Our sales and service staff are pleased to assist our clients with alternatives that are available within our industry to ensure their orders are manufactured with a view towards environmental responsibility.  |
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