Sustainability

About our sustainable business practices.

Every single day, people make decisions based on the weather. The Met Office provides weather and climate forecasts to help with those decisions so people can be safe, well and prosperous.

However, we appreciate the operations of our organisation have environmental impacts and we’re absolutely committed to behaving in a responsible, sustainable way. Therefore, sustainability is at the very heart of our purpose: working at the forefront of weather and climate science for protection, prosperity, and well-being.

We have provided regular, accurate forecasts for over 160 years, helping people choose what to do and when, both day-to-day and over the long-term. Today, we might help someone determine whether to hang out their washing. Tomorrow, we might help protect critical national infrastructure. Further into the future, our science will help individuals, governments and businesses around the world make informed decisions to adapt and thrive in a changing climate. Today, tomorrow and into the future we will do this as sustainably as possible.

As part of our commitment to sustainability, we have set out the Met Office’s path to carbon neutrality.

We are a responsible business

We promote sustainability on a daily basis through several key themes:

Reducing and recycling plastic

The Met Office is committed to reducing single-use plastic waste and, in December 2018, the Met Office achieved the Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) Plastic Free Champion Award.

We are working to reduce our plastic usage including; removal of plastic and cardboard cups from our vending machines – our staff use their own reusable cups and we also have reusable cups available for sale in our retail outlet. Removal of plastic bottles from our vending and catering outlets, moving to non-plastic stationery items, and using alternative packaging materials such as packing peanuts made from potato starch.

At our head office, we have separate recycling streams for different types of waste and separate out our plastic waste for recycling. Our plastic waste is processed at a local depot and all waste streams are weighed so we can monitor our waste. We have seen a significant reduction in our mixed plastic waste – from ~7,500kg in FY 2015/16 to ~4,500kg in FY2022/23.